Fig 2: Upregulations of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 in HCCs. Human tissues were stained with the indicated antibodies followed by confocal observation. (a) The levels of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 were determined using the ZEN program (Supplementary Tables 1 and 2). p-values (*P < 0.05; **P < 0.01) were determined by a paired t-test, and % differences are shown. (n) is the number of samples. (b) The representative images were selected from normal and HCCs groups, respectively. DAPI was used for nucleus staining, and scar bars, 20 (inserted) and 100 μm.

Fig 3: TIPRL is associated with the poor prognosis of HCC patients. (a) A Cox regression hazard coefficients (upper) and a proportionality test (lower) were performed to determine the hazard/prognostic effect and independency of the variables, TIPRL, LC3, CD133, sex (male vs female), on the survivability of HCC patients using XLSTAT. (b–d) A public database (www.kmplot.com) was used to examine relationships between mRNA levels of TIPRL, MAP1LC3A (LC3) and PROM1 (CD133) and survivability of HCC patients.

Fig 4: Diagnostic efficacies of TIPRL, LC3, CD133 and the TIPRL/LC3/CD133 models in HCCs and early liver cancers. Diagnostic efficacies of TIPRL, LC3, CD133 and the combined models in HCCs (a,b) and grade1 liver cancers (c,d) were determined using ROC analysis. AUC, area under the curve.

Fig 5: Significant correlations between levels of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 in liver cancers. (a–c) The statistically significant associations between levels of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 in each grade of liver cancers were determined by the Spearman correlation. Each dot indicates a single patient. (d) The representative images were selected from each grade of human liver cancer tissues that were stained with indicated antibodies. DAPI was used for nucleus staining, and scar bar, 100 μm. (e) Quantitative analyses of TIPRL, LC3 and CD133 were conducted according to each grade of liver cancers. (n), the number of samples is indicated.