Fig. 1.

Transcriptomic overview and immuno-clinical associations in Korean papillary thyroid cancer patients. (A) Volcano plots showing differentially expressed genes across groups. Red and gray dots represent significance (Fisher exact test; P<0.01 and fold change >1.5) and nonsignificance, respectively. (B) Results of gene-set enrichment analysis using the KEGG and Hallmark database from Enrichr. Light red and light blue indicate upregulated and downregulated terms in tumors compared to normal tissues. (C) Increased immune-related signaling was exclusively observed when lymph node metastasis (LNM) and recurrence occurred. Nuclear factor kappa-light-chain-enhancer of activated B cells (NF-κB) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) were only enriched when LNM occurred and CD8+ T cells and Th1 cells were only enriched when recurrence occurred. EMT, epithelial-mesenchymal transition; UV, ultraviolet.