Francesca Pentimalli1†
Marija Krstic-Demonacos
Caterina Costa
Emyr Yosef Bakker- 1Department of Medicine and Surgery, LUM University “Giuseppe DeGennaro”, Bari, Italy
- 2Biomedical Research Centre, School of Science, Engineering and Environment, University of Salford, Salford, United Kingdom
- 3Cell Biology and Biotherapy Unit, Istituto Nazionale Tumori-Scientific Institute for Research and Care (IRCCS)-Fondazione G. Pascale, Napoli, Italy
- 4Center for Biotechnology, Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, College of Science and Technology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, United States
- 5Department of Biotechnological and Applied Clinical Sciences, University of Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy
- 6School of Medicine, University of Central Lancashire, Preston, United Kingdom
A Correction on
Intratumor microbiota as a novel potential prognostic indicator in mesothelioma
By Pentimalli F, Krstic-Demonacos M, Costa C, Mutti L and Bakker EY (2023). Front. Immunol. 14:1129513. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2023.1129513
An underpinning article cited in the original version of this manuscript [Poore et al, 2020 (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2095-1)] was retracted in June 2024. This was on the basis of criticisms published by Gihawi and colleagues in 2023 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37811944/), which occurred after the publication of the original version of this manuscript. Whilst the rebuttal by Sepich-Poore and colleagues remains live to this date (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388-024-02974-w), the retraction of the 2020 article may impact the validity of some specific information in our article (e.g. some exact genera), though the original overarching conclusions may still hold merit.
A correction has been made to the section Methods, Identifying microbiome differences, Paragraph 2:
“This analysis automatically generated the Kaplan-Meier survival curve between the two groups, alongside the microbiome signatures comparison. In order to calculate a more precise p-value alongside the hazard ratio for the survival data, the resultant raw Kaplan-Meier data was downloaded and input to KMPlot using the upload function (23, 24). The microbiome signatures data were originally added to cBioPortal for a number of cancers on the basis of another study, which has since been retracted based on criticisms from Gihawi and colleagues (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37811944/). Although the authors’ rebuttal in which they said they reproduced their findings remains live (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41388-024-02974-w), it is worth noting that this retraction means that some specific information in this manuscript (e.g. exact genera) may be uncertain, even if there may still be merit in the overarching findings.
Clinical parameters for patients were also obtained via the Compare analysis, as were the differentially expressed genes.”
A correction has been made to the section Methods, Contaminant removal, Paragraphs 1 and 2:
“Due to the recognised issue of contaminants (i.e., tumour sample contamination by external microbes during data collection and processing) when considering microbiome data, a decontamination analysis was performed on the list of genera that were statistically significantly associated (based on q-value) with patient survival.
This was performed through cross-examination with supplementary information from the aforementioned original article which added the signatures to cBioPortal.”
The original version of this article has been updated.
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Keywords: mesothelioma, microbiota, microbiome, bioinformatics, Kaplan-Meier, DEG (differentially expressed gene) analysis, functional annotation analysis, Cox proportional hazards modelling
Citation: Pentimalli F, Krstic-Demonacos M, Costa C, Mutti L and Bakker EY (2025) Correction: Intratumor microbiota as a novel potential prognostic indicator in mesothelioma. Front. Immunol. 16:1703111. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1703111
Received: 10 September 2025; Accepted: 29 September 2025;
Published: 15 October 2025.
Edited and reviewed by:
Chiara Porta, University of Eastern Piedmont, ItalyCopyright © 2025 Pentimalli, Krstic-Demonacos, Costa, Mutti and Bakker. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Luciano Mutti, bHVjaWFuby5tdXR0aUB1bml2YXEuaXQ=; bHVjaWFuby5tdXR0aUB0ZW1wbGUuZWR1; Emyr Yosef Bakker, ZWJha2tlckB1Y2xhbi5hYy51aw==
†These authors have contributed equally to this work