Retraction in Part: A Genomic Approach to Identify Molecular Pathways Associated with Chemotherapy Resistance

We wish to retract Table 1 and Supplemental Table 1 from our article entitled “A genomic approach to identify molecular pathways associated with chemotherapy resistance,” which was published in the October 2008 issue of Molecular Cancer Therapeutics (1).

Using previously published annotations for chemotherapy sensitivity in the NCI-60 series of cancer cell lines (2), we performed gene set enrichment analysis on predefined groups of sensitive and resistant NCI-60 cell lines for a range of chemotherapies to identify biological pathways associated with resistance. We purposefully used the annotations for sensitivity and resistance published in the Nature Medicine article and applied a complementary computational approach in order to glean biological insight from the differential gene expression. The article upon which our annotations were based has now been retracted (3). After re-examination, the annotations for the cell lines with respect to chemotherapy sensitivity were erroneous. Thus, our manuscript propagates this error and the results in Table 1 and Supplemental Table 1 from our manuscript are invalid.

The majority of the paper reports our work including in vitro sensitivity testing for 40 lung cancer cell lines, identification of pathways associated with resistance to tested agents, and functional validation of a lead candidate pathway in vitro. These data appear in the remaining Figures 1–7 and Table 2 of the paper and we remain confident in our analysis and findings.

Richard F. Riedel

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University and ²Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine

Alessandro Porrello

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University

Emily Pontzer

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University

Emily J. Chenette

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University

David S. Hsu

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University and ²Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Duke University

Bala Balakumaran

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University

Anil Potti*

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University and ²Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, Duke University

*Former Institute

Joseph Nevins

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University and ³Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

Phillip G. Febbo**

¹Duke Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University and ²Division of Medical Oncology, Department of Medicine, and ³Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina

**Current Institution

Departments of Medicine and Urology, University of California, San Francisco Medical School, San Francisco, CA