Fig. 1

Overexpressed ARHGEF37 correlates with pulmonary metastatic of HCC. a The Venn diagram displays the genes that differentially expressed (fold-change > 2, P < 0.05) among the public datasets GSE38945 and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset. b Statistical analysis of overall (n = 364, P = 0.025; left), relapse-free (n = 316, P < 0.001; middle) and progression free (n = 360, P = 0.0039; right) survival in patients with HCC with low or high ARHGEF37 expression in the KM-plotter dataset. c qRT-PCR analysis of the mRNA level of ARHGEF37 in clinical HCC tissues without lung metastasis (LM) (n = 5) and primary HCC tissues with lung metastasis (n = 5). GAPDH served as a loading control. d Immunoblotting analysis of ARHGEF37 levels in clinical HCC tissues without lung metastasis (n = 5) and primary HCC tissues with lung metastasis (n = 5). GAPDH served as the loading control. e Correlation analysis of the mRNA and protein expression of ARHGEF37 in clinical HCC tissues. f-g) Representative images (f) and quantification (g) of ARHGEF37 expression in HCC tissues without lung metastasis (n = 70), primary HCC tissues with pulmonary metastasis (n = 30), and matched HCC lung metastasis tissues (n = 30). Scale bar: 20 μm. h Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of the association of ARHGEF37 protein levels with overall (n = 365, P < 0.001; left) and metastasis-free (n = 115, P < 0.001; right) survival in patients with HCC. Data of panel d is derived from three independent experiments, and each error bar in panel c represents the mean ± SD of three independent experiments. *** P < 0.001