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. 2021 Sep 6;9:741820. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.741820

FIGURE 5.

FIGURE 5

Intratumoral Gal-1–LC3+ TAMs correlate to the poor OS and PFS rates of HCC patients. (A) Serum levels of Gal-1 in healthy donors (n = 21) and HCC patients (n = 25) were analyzed by ELISA. ∗∗∗p < 0.0001. (B) Liver tumor sections from HCC patients with high or low serum levels of Gal-1 were stained with anti-CD68 (blue), anti-Gal-1 (green), and anti-LC3 (red) antibodies. Representative images show the protein distribution as observed by confocal microscopy. Scale bar = 20 μm. (C–E) Liver tumor sections of 93 retrospectively recruited HCC patients were stained with anti-CD68 (blue), anti-Gal-1 (green), and anti-LC3 (red) antibodies. Representative images show the protein distribution as observed by confocal microscopy (scale bar = 20 μm) (C). The expression correlation between LC3 and Gal-1 in CD68+ TAMs was analyzed by Bivariate correlation analysis using Pearson’s correlation (r = −0.535, p < 0.001) as well as Spearman’s correlation (r = −0.534, p < 0.001) (D). The OS and PFS rates of TAMs carrying Gal-1– LC3–, Gal-1– LC3+, Gal-1+ LC3–, or Gal-1+ LC3+ HCC patients were analyzed by Kaplan-Meier survival analyses (E).