Fig. 1. SOX4 regulates the PI3K/Akt pathway activity in basal-like breast cancer.
PI3K pathway activity is significantly upregulated in tumor samples with high SOX4 expression (top quartile) compared to samples with low (bottom quartile) SOX4 expression in the a TCGA (n = 1031, p = 3.0 × 10−27) and b METABRIC (n = 1991, p = 4.7 × 10−70) datasets. PAM50 subtype is shown in the inset of a and b and demonstrates that samples with high SOX4 expression are predominantly basal-like tumors (red) in both datasets. c SOX4 expression is significantly upregulated in 88.1% of in basal-like breast tumors (n = 179) compared to the median expression in adjacent normal tissue (n = 94) from the TCGA dataset (p = 6.35 × 10−20). d siRNA-mediated silencing of SOX4 significantly reduced SOX4 expression in HCC1143 (p = 0.001) and HCC1954 (p = 0.005) TNBC cell lines. Representative western blot analysis demonstrating significant reduction in SOX4, pAkt, pS6K, and p4EBP1 expression in both e HCC1143 and f HCC1954 cell lines.