Figure 8.

ABHD5 proficiency is significantly associated with the expression levels of autophagy-related proteins in CRCs. (A) Representative immunostaining images of ABHD5, BECN1 and SQSTM1 expression patterns in serial tissue section of CRCs. (B) Correlation analysis for ABHD5 in colorectal cancer tissues versus BECN1 and SQSTM1. Plotted data are the expression index calculated from immunostaining. (C) Co-expression analysis for ABHD5 in colorectal cancer vs. BECN1, LC3-II and CASP3. Plotted data are log2 mRNA expression from GSE39528. (D) Statistical analysis of the correlation between ABHD5 expression levels and the relapse-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS) of CRC patients (Kaplan-Meier Survival Curves) from dataset GSE17536 and GSE39528. Tumor tissue was available from a total of 566 patients, in which 235 patients were excluded on the basis of the impact of chemotherapy, 28 patients were excluded on the basis of below-standard quality of microarray, and 37 patients were excluded for the following reasons: 17 lacked sufficient details for chemotherapy; 9 lacked sufficient details for OS or RFS; 5 were re-recruited after recurrence; 5 were dead within a month after surgery; 1 lacked sufficient details for TNM (tumor node metastasis). The remaining 266 patients were recruited into our study, with 133 exhibiting deficient ABHD5 (ABHD5 low, n = 133) and the 133 exhibiting proficient ABHD5 (ABHD5 high, n = 133).