Fig. 1.

Wwox and p-STAT3 exhibit converse patterns of expression in breast cancer (BC) cells. a Western blotting was performed to detect p-STAT3 and Wwox levels in 12 human BC cell lines. The protein levels of p-STAT3 were detected. b 2D plots of total RNA-seq genes in Group 1 luminal cells (MCF-7, T47D, BT-474) and Group 2 basal cells (SUM159, HBL100, BT-549). Up- and downregulated genes with fold change ≥2.0 are highlighted. c KEGG pathway analysis of up-regulated genes in basal cells compared with luminal cells. d–f Western blot analysis of Wwox and p-STAT3 expression in SUM159 (d), HBL100 (e), and MDA-MB-231 cells (f) stably transfected with control (CT) or Wwox-encoding vectors. g, h IHC determination of Wwox and p-STAT3 expression in 90 human triple-negative BCs. Representative IHC staining images of Wwox and p-STAT3 (g); results are tabulated as shown (h); ***p < 0.001, χ² test, scale bar, 100 μm