Figure 1. Up-regulation of POSTN in HNC was associated with the metastasis of tumor.

(A) Venn diagrams and list of the identified up-regulated genes (13 genes) found in three datasets of microarray analysis published by Kuriakose et al.²², Toruner et al.²³ and Hu et al.²⁴. (B) The expression levels of SPP1 and POSTN in 29 pairs of HNC samples and paired adjacent normal tissues. (C) Comparison of SPP1 or POSTN expression levels between HNC samples and their paired adjacent normal tissues. A log2-fold change more than 2 was regarded as significant up-regulation (dotted lines). (D) POSTN protein levels were determined in 10 paired HNC samples using western blotting. (E) POSTN expression was determined using real-time PCR in 73 cases (involving 33 metastatic cases) of HNC samples and in 92 cases of normal oral epithelial tissues. (****p < 0.0001; N, adjacent normal tissue; T, tumor tissue.)