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. 2023 Dec 13;73(6):985–999. doi: 10.1136/gutjnl-2023-331342

Figure 2.

Figure 2

MMP9 promotes progression of HCC through inducing suppressive TIME (A, B) Growth curves and tumour weight of Hepa1-6 (scramble/sh MMP9) subcutaneous tumours in BALB/c nude mice and C57BL/6 J mice (n=6/7). (C) Representative B-US and general images of orthotopic tumours derived from Hepa1-6 (scramble/sh MMP9) C57BL/6 J mouse models. (D) The tumour weight of C57BL/6 J mouse models (n=6). (E) Survival curves of mice in each group of C57BL/6 J mouse models (n=15). (F) The t-SNE plot and composition of key immune cells in tumour tissue from C57BL/6 J mouse models (n=5). (G–I) Representative flow cytometry data showing the proportion of T cells and macrophages in tumour tissue from C57BL/6 J mouse models. The statistics results are shown on the right. (J) The t-SNE plots and composition of PD-1 and TIM-3 positive T cells and immune memory (CD44lo CD62Lhi, CD44hi CD62Llo and CD44hi CD62Lhi) T cells in tumour tissue from C57BL/6 J mouse models (n=5). The statistics results were shown as below. ns, no significance, *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, ****p<0.0001. Mean±SEM. Unpaired Student’s t-test (A, B, D, F–J), log-rank test (E). B-US, B-ultrasound; ICB, immune checkpoint blockade; PD-1, programmed death-1; sh MMP9, MMP9-knockdown; t-SNE, t-distributed stochastic neighbour embedding; TIM-3, t cell immunoglobulin and mucin domain-3.