Fig. 2

Elevated level of TRAF1 in sunitinib-resistant RCC. A Identification of differently expressed genes by RNA sequence in sunitinib resistant cell line and CDX-R compared to the corresponding sensitive groups (TS: sensitive tumor sample; TR: resistant tumor sample; S: sensitive cells; R: resistant cells). B The venn diagram was generated from the gene sets enriched for transcripts between tumor samples and cell samples. C Gene ontology analysis of differential expressed genes. D and E The expression of TRAF1 mRNA was determined by RT-qPCR in CDX models and cell lines. F and G The expression of TRAF1 protein was analyzed by western blotting in CDX samples(n = 10) and cell lines. H and I Immunohistochemistry for TRAF1 in CDX-S and CDX-R. Left panels show images and quantification is shown on the right. J and K Immunohistochemistry for TRAF1 in clinical patient samples. Left panels show images and quantification is shown on the right. L Kaplan–Meier survival analysis for RCC patients treated with sunitinib with low and high TRAF1 expression. The low and high TRAF1 expression was cut off by the median expression. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Three different independent experiments with three technical repetitions were performed. Data are expressed as the mean ± SEM. Statistical analyses used Student’s t-test and Kaplan–Meier survival analysis. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001 and **** p < 0.0001