Fig 2: MV as prognostic biomarkers in cancer. (a) Kaplan–Meier survival curves of all cancer patients (n = 330) according to the number of EMMPRIN+ MV in blood. (b–e) Kaplan-Meier curves for patient survival in the indicated cancer subclasses in regard to the percentage of MUC1+, EpCAM+, or EGFR+ MV in blood. (f) ROC curves were used to determine the discriminative power of MV-associated EMMPRIN alone (blue) or in combination with EpCAM, EGFR, and MUC1 (green) in the total study cohort. (g) ROC curves for the four largest cancer subgroups stratified for EMMPRIN alone or in combination with MUC1, EpCAM and EGFR.

Fig 3: Characterization by ATR-FTIR and FTIRI spectra. The MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR3 breast cancer cell lines were characterized with their corresponding nanoprobe coupled to the respective surface protein (EpCAM, MUC-1 or HER-2) by ATR-FTIR. Blue line = cell line; red line = nanoprobe + cell line; black line = nanoprobe. The location of nanoprobes on the cell membrane was determined by Mapping image (FTIRI) were identified by IR score image as color-coding image red > yellow > blue (greater to smaller concentration of the nanoprobe, in which blue denotes scant or null presence).

Fig 4: ATR-FTIR spectra analyses. Evaluation of the binding efficiency of each nanoprobe to its corresponding antibody to form the nanoprobes for: (a) EpCAM, (b) MUC-1 and (c) HER-2.

Fig 5: Determination cell surface protein expression. With flow cytometry, fluorescence intensity was measured in three cell lines (MCF-7, MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3) to evaluate the expression of the corresponding surface proteins: (a) EpCAM, (b) MUC-1 and (c) HER-2.