Following the publication of this paper, it was drawn to the authors' attention by an interested reader that some tumours featured in Fig. 6A of the above paper were strikingly similar to those featured in Fig. 8A of an article appearing in the same journal [Fan F‑Y, Deng R, Yi H, Sun H‑P, Zeng Y, He G‑C and Su Y: The inhibitory effect of MEG3/miR‑214/AIFM2 axis on the growth of T‑cell lymphoblastic lymphoma. Int J Oncol 51: 316‑326, 2017]. Furthermore, flow cytometric images featured in Fig. 2G of the above paper were strikingly similar to data featured in the following article [Zhang H‑j, Wei Q‑f, Wang S‑j, Zhang H‑j, Zhang X‑y, Geng Q, Cui Y‑h and Wang X‑h: LncRNA HOTAIR alleviates rheumatoid arthritis by targeting miR‑138 and inactivating NF‑κB pathway. Int Immunopharmacol 50: 283‑290, 2017]. The Editor asked the authors for an explanation to account for the appearance of strikingly similar data in their paper independently, and they responded to request that the paper be retracted from International Journal of Oncology. All the authors agreed that the article should be retracted. The Editor apologizes to the readership for any inconvenience caused. [the original article was published in International Journal of Oncology 50: 1821‑1831, 2017; DOI: 10.3892/ijo.2017.3943].