Fig 2: Different expression levels of FCN2 in liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) analyzed using R. (A) Pathologic stages. (B) Histological grade. (C) Fibrosis Ishak scale scores. (D) Race. (E) Normal tissue and liver cancer. (F) Adjacent hepatic tissue inflammation. (G) Age (H). BMI. (I) Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP). (J) Vascular invasion. (K) Gender. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. ns: not statistically significant.

Fig 3: Correlation of FCN2 expression with immune characteristics. (A) Differential distribution of the immune cells in patients with high and low FCN2 expressions. (B–G) Correlation between the expression level of FCN2 and immune infiltration in hepatocellular carcinoma: (B) Neutrophils, (C) Eosinophils, (D) NK cells, (E) Tcm, (F) DC, (G) Th2 cells. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001. ns, no significance.

Fig 4: Immunohistochemical comparison of FCN2 and the molecules with strong correlations [based on the Human Protein Atlas (HPA)].

Fig 5: Immunomodulators, chemokines, and receptors associated with FCN2. (A) Distribution of the FCN2 immunological scores in tumor and normal tissues.The ordinate reflects the distribution of the immunological scores in distinct groups, whereas the abscissa indicates the immune cell types. The Wilcoxon test was used to compare statistical differences between the two groups, and the Kruskal–Wallis test was used to determine the significance of the differences between three groups. (a) Heatmap of the immune cell scores. Different hues represent the varied expression distributions in different samples. Asterisks indicate significance levels at *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001. (b) Percentages of tumor-infiltrating immune cells in each sample. Different colors depict the different types of immunological cells. The abscissa denotes the sample, whereas the ordinate denotes the percentage of immune cells in a single sample. (H) Immunomodulators, chemokines, and receptors associated with FCN2 in liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC). (B) CCL14. (C) CCL16. (D) CCL23. (E) TNFSF4. (F) CD276. (G) TNFRSF4. (H) KDR. ****p < 0.0001.