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. 2016 Jul 21;7(34):55506–55517. doi: 10.18632/oncotarget.10747

Figure 1. Elevated tropomyosin receptor kinase B (TrkB) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression levels in tumors from patients with advanced gastric cancer and bone metastatic gastric cancer cell lines.

Figure 1

A. Elevated TrkB transcript expression in patients with stage III gastric cancer. TrkB mRNA expression was analyzed in gastric tumor tissues from patients with sequential-staged gastric cancer: I (n=4), II (n=7), III (n=52), and IV (n=7). Expression data were extracted from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset GSE27342 and used to compare the TrkB expression status. Bars indicate the mean values of samples in each group (P=0.031 in comparison with stage I). P values were obtained using the Wilcoxon rank-sum test. B. Elevated TrkB and BDNF protein expression in patients with stage III gastric cancer. IHC was used to evaluate the expression levels of TrkB and BDNF proteins in gastric tumor biopsy tissues obtained from patients with sequentially staged gastric cancer (stages I–IV). IgG indicates rabbit control antibodies. Scale bar: 200 μm. TrkB and BDNF expression levels are represented as percentages of immunoreactive cells in gastric cancer tissue specimens. Data are shown as the means ± standard deviations (SD; *P <0.05 in comparison with Stage I). C. IHC was used to evaluate the expression levels of TrkB and BDNF proteins in gastric tumor biopsy tissues obtained from patients with no metastasis (n=8) and metastasis (n=9). IgG indicates rabbit control antibodies. Scale bar: 200 μm. TrkB and BDNF expression levels are represented as percentages of immunoreactive cells in gastric cancer tissue specimens. Data are shown as the means ± standard deviations (SD; *P <0.05 in comparison with no metastasis). D and E. Increased TrkB and BDNF mRNA expression in the bone metastatic gastric cancer cell line HTB135. TrkB (D) and BDNF (E) mRNA expression levels were determined by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) in human nonmetastatic (SNU-484, SNU-719) and metastatic (SNU-16, SNU-620, NCI-N87, MKN45, and HTB135) gastric cancer cell lines. The expression levels are presented relative to those of glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), which was used as a reference gene. Ascites: peritoneal cavity fluid. Data are shown as means ± SD (*P <0.05 in comparison with SNU484 cells). F. Elevated BDNF protein expression in HTB135 cells. BDNF protein expression levels in culture media from human gastric cancer cell lines were determined using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Data are shown as means ± SD (*P <0.05 in comparison with SNU484 cells). P values were obtained using Student's t test.