Fig 2: Association between disease-specific survival of PTC patients and target protein expression levels, as analyzed using Kaplan-Meier plotsPTC patient subgroups were stratified by high- and low-level expression of AGRN, CTSC, ERAP2, or GPNMB, and then analyzed for their disease-specific survival using a Kaplan-Meier plot. The log-rank test p-value is denoted in each plot. Two patients died of other causes but not thyroid cancer had been excluded from this analysis. Thus, the numbers of patients used for this analysis are 112, 115, 113 and 113 for AGRN, CTSC, ERAP2 and GPNMB, respectively.

Fig 3: Elevated expression of AGRN, CTSC, ERAP2, and GPNMB in PTC tissues(A) Immunohistochemical staining for AGRN, CTSC, ERAP2, and GPNMB in paired tumor (T) and adjacent non-tumor (AN) tissues from two representative cases (scale bar = 200 mm). The boxed areas indicated in the upper panels are enlarged and shown in the lower panels. (B) Statistical analysis of the expression levels of AGRN, CTSC, ERAP2, and GPNMB in PTC specimens harboring both tumor and adjacent non-tumor cells. High-level expression is indicated by strong staining (2+/3+), whereas low-level expression is indicated by weakly positive (1+) and absent (-) staining. (C) Statistical analysis of the staining scores from specimens harboring both T and AN tissues. The dots indicate each case in the scatter dot plot; the middle line indicates the median.