Figure 1.

AY was highly expressed in HCC tissues and cells. A. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis of lncRNA AY expression in HCC tissues (T) and matching adjacent non-tumor (NT) liver tissues (a,c). Significant differences in median AY expression levels between HCC and NT (P < 0.001) by Mann-Whitney test (b). Correlation analysis between integrin αV (ITGAV) and AY expression levels (d). -, ITGAV RNA expression level was lower in HCC tissue than adjacent NT tissue; +, ITGAV RNA expression level was higher in HCC tissue than adjacent NT tissue. The differences reached significance (P < 0.05) by Pearson χ² test. B. In situ hybridization analysis of AY expression in 80 paired HCC tissues and adjacent non-tumor (NT) tissues. The positive hybridization signals per cell were compared between HCC and NT tissues (a). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of patients with low AY expression (low) and high AY expression (high) based on threshold 4.083 calculated by time-dependent ROC curve analysis (c & d). Comparison of AY expression between early (T1, 2) and late (T3, 4) TNM stage tumors (b); between patients with large (> 3 cm) and small (< 3 cm) tumor sizes (e); and between patients with vessel carcinoma embolus and without embolus (f). C. AY expression analysis of 180 HCC cases from the TCGA database (a). Kaplan-Meier analysis of overall survival of 180 patients with HCC based on AY expression (0.635 as AY cutoff calculated by time-dependent ROC curve analysis) (b). Pearson correlation analysis between AY expression and ITGAV expression (c). D. AY expression in various tissues and tumors from TCGA database. BRCA Breast invasive carcinoma, BLCA Bladder urothelial carcinoma, CESC Cervicalsquamous cell carcinoma and endocervical adenocarcinoma, HNSC Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, KIRC Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma, KIRP Kidney renal papillary cell carcinoma, LIHC Liver hepatocellular carcinoma, LUAD Lung adenocarcinoma, LUSC Lung squamous cell carcinoma, THCA Thyroid carcinoma, PRAD Prostate adenocarcinoma, STAD Stomach adenocarcinoma, UCEC Uterine corpus endometrioid carcinoma, LGG Brain lower grade glioma, COAD Colon adenocarcinoma, GBM Glioblastoma multiforme, OV Ovarian serous cystadenocarcinoma, READ Rectum adenocarcinoma, SKCM Skin cutaneous melanoma. E. QRT-PCR analysis of AY expression in HCC cells with high (MHCC97H) and low (MHCC97L) metastatic potential (a). AY and ITGAV expression was analyzed by qRT-PCR in various liver cancer cell lines and human hepatocytes, LO2 (b & c). Pearson correlation analysis between AY and ITGAV RNA expressions (d). Data are representative of three independent experiments. *, P < 0.05; **, P < 0.01; ***, P < 0.001.