Fig. 1

p38, MK2, RBPs and HIF-1α are overexpressed and activated in HNSCC. Representative IHC staining images of clinical tissue samples determining the expression and activation status of p38, p-p38, mitogen-activated protein kinase-activated protein kinase-2 (MK2), p-MK2, CCAAT/enhancer-binding protein delta (CEBPδ), p-CEBPδ, AU-rich element binding factor-1 (AUF1), p-AUF1, human antigen R (HuR), p-HuR, CUG triplet repeat RNA binding protein-1 (CUGBP1), tristetraprolin (TTP), and hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1α) in: (a, c, e) Normal tissue sections of head and neck region showing consistent negative staining in normal stratified squamous epithelium and, (b, d, f) HNSCC tissue sections showing consistent positive staining. The sections were subjected to IHC staining using specific primary antibodies followed by appropriate secondary antibody as described in Materials and Methods. Levels of expression of the above mentioned proteins were found to be relatively high in tumors (brown colour) as compared to normal controls. The images have been captured at 200x and the scale bar denotes 50 μm