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. 2021 Mar 5;11(10):4975–4991. doi: 10.7150/thno.55074

Figure 1.

Figure 1

FOSL2 expression is upregulated and positively correlates with angiogenesis in breast cancer CAFs. (A) The known human transcription factors were downloaded from a public database (http://humantfs.ccbr.utoronto.ca/), the upregulated genes in CAFs were identified using microarray data, and the downregulated genes of preeclampsia from the GEO database of GSE99007 were analyzed by bioinformatics. The Venn diagram shows twenty dysregulated transcription factors in CAFs. (B) Heatmap of the dysregulated transcription factors in 20 paired breast CAFs and NFs detected by Agilent mRNA microarrays (fold changes>1.5; p<0.05, CAFs vs NFs). (C, D) western blot analysis to determine the levels of FOSL2 protein in 12 paired primary CAFs and their NFs isolated from breast tumor tissues (C) and in 2 paired immortalized NFs and CAFs (D). β-actin was the loading control. (E) Percentages of specimens with low or high expression of FOSL2 according to stage. (F) Kaplan-Meier survival curve of overall survival in 117 patients with carcinoma according to stromal FOSL2 expression. (G) Representative IHC staining image showing the increased microvessel density in breast cancer tissues with high FOSL2 expression. (H) Quantity of MVD in breast tumor tissues with high or low FOSL2 expression. (I) The correlation between the levels of FOSL2 and CD31 in breast tumor samples from TCGA (r=0.55, p<0.001). (J) GSEA analysis of TCGA database showing a positive correlation between FOSL2 expression levels and the enrichment of angiogenesis-related genes.