Fig. 4.

ASCT2 promotes the activation of the mTORC1 pathway. a SCC15 and FaDu cells infected with a lentiviral vector expressing ASCT2 shRNA or a control vector were treated with either DMSO or V-9302 (25 µM, 48 h), followed by the detection of phosphorylated p70S6K and phosphorylated S6 levels by western blotting. b Patients in the TCGA HNSCC project were divided into two groups (top 25% with high ASCT2 expression and bottom 25% with low ASCT2 expression). GSEA results show that ‘HALLMARK_MTORC1_SIGNALING’ genes were differentially enriched in high ASCT2 expression HNSCC patients. c HNSCC patients were divided into four groups according to ASCT2 and p-mTOR expression as measured by immunohistochemistry. The chi-square test was used to evaluate the relationship between ASCT2 and p-mTOR expression. Representative images of immunohistochemical staining are shown