Erratum to: Widespread Expression of Erythropoietin Receptor in Brain and Its Induction by Injury

The following paragraph was published in: Christoph Ott, Henrik Martens, Imam Hassouna, Bárbara Oliveira, Christian Erck, Maria-Patapia Zafeiriou, Ulla-Kaisa Peteri, Dörte Hesse, Simone Gerhart, Bekir Altas, Tekla Kolbow, Herbert Stadler, Hiroshi Kawabe, Wolfram-Hubertus Zimmermann, Klaus-Armin Nave, Walter Schulz-Schaeffer, Olaf Jahn, and Hannelore Ehrenreich. Widespread Expression of Erythropoietin Receptor in Brain and Its Induction by Injury. Mol. Med. 21:803-15.

Antibodies against EPOR (EPOR-AB) have been widely used to characterize EPOR expression and localization, but cell surface EPOR expression is low, even in stimulated states, and, most importantly, all commercially available EPOR-AB have been hampered by nonspecific cross-reactivities, calling into question the literature based exclusively on them. This, in turn, raised discussions within the scientific community, questioning the expression of EPOR in extra-hematopoietic tissues (14–16). These discussions were likely nurtured by conflicts of interest, trying to restrict the effects of EPO, a highly attractive compound commercially for the anemia market, to hematopoiesis. Nevertheless, they made it very obvious that the existing EPOR-AB were essentially unreliable, and that the production and thorough characterization of new and more specific EPOR-AB had to be seen as a major challenge for the future (14,17–18).

Molecular Medicine encourages scientific discourse, but does not impute motive in disagreements. The editors apologize for this oversight.