Fig. 4.

Validation of targets in an independent ccRCC patient cohort from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). a Heatmap of enrichment scores in TCGA patient cohort (KIRC). Shown are 50 signatures that were identified as ccRCC-enriched in analysis of cohort 1 and proximal tubule cells. Signatures that were not enriched by an enrichment score of ≥ 0.5 in at least 80% of TCGA cohort samples are marked by blue asterisks. Genes exclusively included in those signatures were removed in further analyses. b Kernel density estimate of mean log₂ gene expression levels in TCGA ccRCC tumor samples. Mean log₂ expression levels of the 173 candidate genes are marked in red. The minimal expression threshold was set at the local minimum of the estimated frequency distribution at a log₂ expression of 6.5 (gray vertical intersected line). All candidates passed the threshold. c Volcano plot of gene expression fold changes in tumors compared to non-tumor tissues. Shown are the values of the unpaired analysis. Expression values that passed the set thresholds at FC > 0 and p < 0.05 in both unpaired and paired analyses are marked in red. d Plotted are the coefficients of variation (CV) in percent. The intersected line marks the set threshold of CV ≤ 10% for candidate selection. Candidates that did not pass the threshold are printed in black