Concerns were raised about unjustified authorship and false statements regarding IRB approval. After evaluating the concerns carefully, we asked the corresponding author to provide an explanation for the concerns. The corresponding author notified the Journal that IRB approval from the author’s institution was not obtained for the human subjects research described in the article. In addition, the corresponding author stated that the five co-authors (MC, KSH, DCC, IYC, and MJK) were attributed as authors without having made intellectual contributions to this study, and therefore agreed with changing the five persons’ co-authorship to contributorship. In Korea, unjustified authorship is construed as a type of research misconduct (Ministry of Science and Technology, directive No.236, enacted 2007.2.8.).

As a consequence, the Editors of Journal of Pathology and Translational Medicine retract this article. The corresponding author agrees to the retraction and apologizes to the Korean Society of Pathologists for any inconvenience caused by the publication and retraction of this article.