Following the publication of this article, an investigation conducted internally within our Department has revealed that the data published in Fig. 5a are not reproducible. Consequently, confidence in the conclusions drawn from the reported results in the paper has been undermined and, as a result, all authors involved have unanimously agreed to the retraction of this article. All authors recognize the seriousness of this issue and apologize unreservedly to the editors, reviewers and readers. We are also in the process of examining other studies in the paper. We sincerely regret that this study has been compromised, and are committed to rapidly correcting the public record and implementing practices to prevent any recurrence of such a situation in the future. [the original article was published in Molecular Medicine Reports 13: 5068-5076, 2016; DOI: 10.3892/mmr.2016.5195].