Fig. 1.

Upregulation of CHI3L1 correlates with distant metastasis and poor prognosis of human GCs. a Western blot analysis of CHI3L1 protein expression in 5 pairs of gastric tissues (GC and adjacent non-cancerous tissues) after curative resection. Data represent mean ± SEM; *p < 0.05 (Student’s t test). b Immunohistochemical analysis of CHI3L1 protein levels in GC samples on tissue microarrays. Representative examples of CHI3L1 expression in adjacent non-cancerous gastric tissues, GC tissues and GC metastases tissues (lymph node and pancreas) are shown. Scale bars represent 100 μm. c-e Serum CHI3L1 levels in GC patients (n = 100) and normal controls (n = 50) (c); Serum CHI3L1 levels in GC patients with different tumor invasive depth (d) (n = 17 [T1 + T2], n = 83 [T3 + T4]) and lymph node metastasis (e) (n = 21 [N0 + N1], n = 79 [N1 + N2]). Mann-Whitney U test was used to assess p values; *p < 0.05. f-i The overall survival of patients with high or low CHI3L1 expression in GC tissues. Kaplan-Meier test was used to analyze p values