Figure 1.

ITIH5 is predominantly down-regulated in basal-type bladder cancers, while maintained ITIH5 expression predicts longer recurrence-free survival in association with the basal marker CD44. (A) Heatmap cluster analysis of basal-type and luminal-type markers in distinct bladder cancer subtypes of the TCGA data set reveals low ITIH5 mRNA in association with basal-type bladder cancers. (B) Non-parametric Spearman’s analysis to illustrate correlations between mRNA expression of basal-type, luminal-type markers and ITIH5 in the subgroup of SCC-like bladder cancers visualized by a pairwise matrix; red: strong positive correlation; blue: strong negative correlation. (C) Box plots show inverse ITIH5 and CD44 mRNA expression if comparing luminal and basal-type bladder cancers: correlation coefficient including all bladder tumors of the TCGA data set: r: −0.182, p < 0.001. (D) Kaplan–Meier survival curves illustrating recurrence-free survival (RFS) of patients stratified by different combinations of ITIH5 and CD44 mRNA expression: ITIH5^low/CD44^low (blue curve), ITIH5^high/CD44^low (red curve), ITIH5^low/CD44^high (green curve), ITIH5^high/CD44^high (orange curve). Vertical lines: censored cases. * p < 0.05; *** p < 0.001.