The authors of the above article drew to our attention that, in the above paper, they had identified three instances of data overlapping between data panels, suggesting that data purportedly showing results obtained under different experimental conditions had been derived from the same original source. Comparing among the data panels, two pairs of panels in Fig. 4B were shown to be overlapping, and a further pair of panels showed overlapping data in Fig. 6B. The authors were presented with an opportunity to correct their figures in a Corrigendum, although it has subsequently come to light that the replacement figures themselves featured problems with overlapping data. Given the errors that have been identified in the compilation of the figures in this article, the Editor of Oncology Reports has decided that this article should be retracted from the publication owing to a lack of overall confidence in the presented data. The authors all agree to the retraction of this article, and the Editor and the authors apologize for any inconvenience that might result from this retraction. [the original article was published in Oncology Reports 39: 1825-1834, 2018; DOI: 10.3892/or.2018.6261].