Abstract
Following the publication of this article, the authors noticed that the published versions of Figs. 2, 7 and 8 contained incorrect western bands. In examining their raw data, the authors realized that they had used the fibroblasts of keloids [high expression of alpha‑smooth muscle actin (α‑SMA)] instead of adult dermal fibroblasts (low expression of α‑SMA) in certain experiments. Note that no significant differences in morphology exist between myofibroblasts (from keloids) and fibroblasts (from normal dermal tissue). These errors were brought to light since the authors identified that the expression of α‑SMA in Fig. 8 was higher compared with that in Fig. 4. After careful scrutiny, they established that the first author, Bin Zhao, who performed the experiments and analyzed the data shown in Figs. 2, 7 and 8, had mislabelled the myofibroblasts as fibroblasts. However, for all the other experiments in the above‑mentioned article, the cells had been used correctly. The authors regret that these errors were featured in the above‑mentioned article, which may possibly have caused confusion for the readers, and the corrected versions of Figs. 2, 7 and 8 are shown opposite and on the next page. These changes did not affect either the results or the conclusions reported in this paper. The authors apologize to the Editor of International Journal of Molecular Medicine and to the readership for any inconvenience caused. [the original article was published in International Journal of Molecular Medicine 39: 153‑159, 2017; DOI: 10.3892/ijmm.2016.2816].