Fig. 1.

BCL9 and BCL9L are overexpressed in human HCC. aBCL9 and BCL9L expression levels were analyzed using the three public HCC data sets TCGA-LIHC, GSE22058, and GSE25097. BCL9 and BCL9L expression was significantly higher in HCC tissue than in adjacent non-tumorous liver tissue. Tukey box-and-whisker plot; two-tailed Student’s t test. b Western blot analysis of HCC cell lines (HLE, HLF, Huh7, HepG2, Hep3B, and Huh6) and immortalized liver cell lines (THLE-2, THLE-3) for BCL9, BCL9L, and β-catenin protein expression. HepG2 and Huh6 harbor an activating β-catenin deletion and mutation, respectively, causing an accumulation of β-catenin