Fig. 1

WT1-AS was down-regulated with a high correlation with WT1 in HCC acting as an ideal indicator for good prognosis of human HCC. a Down-regulated level of WT1-AS in HCC tissues compared with the corresponding adjacent tissues. b Up-regulated level of WT1 mRNA in HCC. c Protein expression level of WT1 in HCC tissues. d Data were analyzed using the Pearson correlation analysis with natural log transformed expression levels. The result showed that there was an inverse correlation between WT1 and WT1-AS expression levels (P = 0.002, R² = 0.76). e Coding Protein Calculator (http://www.lncipedia.org/) was employed to examine the protein coding ability of WT1-AS. MEG3 was regarded as a positive control. f Expression of WT1-AS in human HCC and adjacent normal tissues. The threshold discriminating normal from elevated systemic levels was obtained using 95 % CI in the healthy controls. g The Kaplan–Meier curve for the overall survival of patients was presented by using WT1-AS expression