Fig. 1

miR-4521 downregulation is associated with disease progression and prognosis in gastric carcinoma. a Venn diagram of the differentially expressed miRNAs that are significantly downregulated or upregulated in metastatic vs non-metastatic GCs and late- versus early-stage GCs from stomach adenocarcinoma miRNA-seq data in TCGA. b Signatures involved in metastasis and EMT are enriched in miR-4521-high versus miR-4521-low patients by GSEA. ES, enrichment score; NES, normalized enrichment score. c qRT-PCR analysis of miR-4521 expression in 140 GC cancer tissues and 62 adjacent normal tissues (cohort A). d Assessment of miR-4521 expression levels in GCs according to their clinical stage, T stage, and status of lymph node or distant metastasis. e ISH analysis of miR-4521 expression in GC specimens and normal tissues (cohort B and cohort C) on tissue microarrays. f Kaplan-Meier analysis of overall survival for patients with GC based on miR-4521 expression. The defined “high” and “low” expression levels of miR-4521 were stratified by the median expression level. c-e Error bars indicate SD. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001