Fig. 1

Up-regulation of HOXB7 in HCC tissues correlates with poor prognosis of HCC. a A representative image showing the expression level of HOXB7 in HCC and paired adjacent noncancerous tissues. HOXB7 was negative in adjacent noncancerous tissue and positive in HCC tissue. b IHC staining scores were used to define low and high expression of HOXB7 in HCC tissues (n = 77; P < 0.01). c Upper panel: protein level of HOXB7 in 10 randomly selected paired HCC tissues was determined by western blot. Lower panel: semi-quantitative analysis of the western blot results. GAPDH was used to normalize the expression level of HOXB7 (n = 10; P < 0.001). d Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of HCC patients. A high level of HOXB7 resulted in a shorter survival time in HCC patients (n = 37); a low level of HOXB7 was correlated with a longer survival time (n = 40; P < 0.001)