Fig. 1

CXCL5 and CXCR2 are upregulated in NPC cell lines and tissue samples. a Representative images of CXCL5 expression and CXCR2 expression in non-tumour tissue and NPC tumour tissue detected by IHC. b The results of ELISAs of the human sera showed that the mean serum CXCL5 concentration of 50 NPC patients was significantly higher than that of 50 non-tumour patients. ***P < 0.001. c, d Upregulations of CXCL5 and CXCR2 were observed in different NPC cell lines compared with non-tumour control cells based on qRT-PCR and western blotting. NP69 cells were used as controls. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01. e Higher levels of CXCL5 in the conditioned media (CM) were observed in the different NPC cell lines compared with the NP69 cells using ELISA. ****P < 0.0001. f Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that higher CXCL5 expression was significantly associated with poorer OS (P = 0.024) and lower DMFS (P = 0.018), and higher CXCR2 expression was significantly associated with lower DMFS (P = 0.042), but not with poorer OS (P = 0.812)