Gregg Semenza, a professor of genetic medicine and director of the vascular program at Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Cell Engineering in Baltimore, shared the 2019 Nobel prize in physiology or medicine for "discoveries of how cells sense and adapt to oxygen availability". Since pseudonymous sleuth Claire Francis and others began using PubPeer to point out potential duplicated or manipulated images in Semenza’s work in 2019, the researcher has retracted 12 papers. A previous retraction from 2011 for a paper co-authored with Naoki Mori – who with 31 retractions sits at No. 25 on our leaderboard – brings the total to 13.
One of the papers, "PHGDH Expression Is Required for Mitochondrial Redox Homeostasis, Breast Cancer Stem Cell Maintenance, and Lung Metastasis", was originally published in 2016. In October 2020, a PubPeer user commented that images labeled as representing tissue from two different mice looked “much more similar than expected.” The authors corrected the figure in 2022.
The other recently retracted paper, "Collagen Prolyl Hydroxylases Are Essential for Breast Cancer Metastasis", originally published in 2013, has been cited nearly 240 times. PubPeer comments pointing out potential image duplications, including from Elisabeth Bik, began appearing in October 2020. The Hopkins review found some of the Western blot lanes were duplicated, as flagged on PubPeer.
