Fig. 1

High expression of HOXA10 in liver cancer and liver TICs. a, b Expression profiles of HOX transcription factors were shown as heatmap. GSE14520 containing 214 peri-tumor samples and 224 tumor samples was analyzed. b HOXA10 expression profiles in peri-tumor and tumor samples were analyzed. c HOXA10 expression was analyzed in 60 peri-tumor samples, 20 early HCC samples (eHCC) and 40 advanced HCC samples (aHCC). All expression results were normalized to the average of peri-tumor expression and shown as scatter diagram. d Immunohistochemistry of HOXA10 in peri-tumor, eHCC and aHCC. Typical images were shown in left panels and calculated ratios were shown in right panels. e Western blot confirmed the high expression of HOXA10 in liver cancer. f HOXA10 expression in oncospheres and non-spheres was examine with realtime PCR. g-i CD133⁺ TICs (g), CD13⁺ TICs (h), EPCAM⁺ TICs (I) and corresponding non-TICs were collected for mRNA extraction, and HOXA10 expression levels were examined by realtime PCR. All expression results were normalized to non-TIC expression levels. For B, data were shown as box and whisker plot (Whiskers are 5th and 95th percentiles). For C, D, F, G, H, I, data were shown as means ± s.d. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001 by one-tailed Student’s t test. Data are representative of four independent experiments