Fig 2: Analysis of the correlation between SPTBN1 expression and common immune modulator marker sets. (A) Correlation between SPTBN1 expression and 47 immune modulator marker sets across TCGA-KIRC and TCGA-UVM. Specifically, (B) In KIRC, SPTBN1 expression was negatively correlated with the expression of TNFSF9, PDCD1 and CTLA4. (C) In UVM, SPTBN1 expression was positively correlated with the expression of TNFSF9, PDCD1 and CTLA4. SPTBN1, non-erythrocytic spectrin beta 1; KIRC, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma; UVM, uveal melanoma; TNFSF9, tumor necrosis factor superfamily member 9; PDCD1, programmed cell death 1; CTLA4, cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-associated protein 4. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. p value < 0.05 were considered to be statistically significant

Fig 3: Flowchart for this study’s main contents. SPTBN1, non-erythrocytic spectrin beta 1; TCGA, the cancer genome atlas; CPTAC, clinical proteomic analysis consortium; GEO, gene expression omnibus; IHC, immunohistochemistry; KIRC, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma; UVM, uveal melanoma; TNFSF9, tumor necrosis factor superfamily member 9

Fig 4: Validation analysis for determining the immunological and prognostic role of SPTBN1 in KIRC based on bioinformatic findings. (A) Representative images of different expression levels of SPTBN1 protein in KIRC tumor tissue samples via IHC staining. (B) Representative photomicrographs of IHC staining of TNFSF9 protein in KIRC tumor samples from high and low SPTBN1-expression groups. (C) The IHC-P scores of TNFSF9 in KIRC samples between high and low SPTBN1-expression groups were compared using Mann-Whitney U-test. (D) Overall survival analysis of clinical KIRC individuals between high and low SPTBN1-expression groups by using Kaplan-Meier curve with log-rank test. SPTBN1, non-erythrocytic spectrin beta 1; KIRC, kidney renal clear cell carcinoma; TNFSF9, tumor necrosis factor superfamily member 9; IHC, immunohistochemistry; IHC-P, immunohistochemistry protein expression. * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01