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. 2022 Jun 24;17(6):e0268693. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0268693

Fig 5. Increased expression of MELK proteins in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) compared to benign tissues.

Fig 5

(A) Representative images from immunohistochemistry (IHC) analyses of MELK protein expression in benign epithelia and IDC tissues. MELK expression was interpreted using the ImmunoReactive Scoring system (IRS), on a scale of 0–12, as no/low (scores 0–3, negative) and moderate/high (scores 4–12, positive). Benign tissue with only nuclear (Nucl) expression (moderate IRS score 8) in 90% of cells is shown. IDC from a luminal A tumor presented with moderate MELK expression in both nuclei (score 8) and cytoplasm (score 4) (Nucl+Cyto). Examples of two MELK-positive IDCs of the same histological grade 3 and stage 2A, showing the presence and absence of cytoplasmic staining, respectively. (B) Nuclear and cytoplasmic expressions of MELK proteins are quantified in benign, DCIS and IDC tissues, which was significantly higher in IDC compared to benign tissues (p = 0.03 and 0.01, respectively). Bars represent the proportion of cases with the given resignation. P-values were calculated using either Kendall’s tau-b for group comparison or cumulative link mixed models for pairwise comparisons and adjusted by Holm’s method.