Fig 2: Immunohistochemical staining of ABCA7 in OC tissues. All experiments were repeated a minimum of five times. The data are presented as the mean ± standard deviation. (A) Representative image of OC tissue and adjacent non-cancerous tissue (magnification, ×100 and ×200). (B) Relative quantitative comparison of ABCA7 expression in OC tissue vs. adjacent non-cancerous tissues using IHC (*P<0.05). (C) Relative ABCA7 mRNA expression in OC tissues vs. adjacent non-cancerous tissues (*P<0.05). (D) Relative ABCA7 mRNA expression was identified in a normal epithelial ovarian HOSE 6-3 cell line and ovarian cancer SKOV-3, Caov-3, A2780, OVCA433 and OVC429 cell lines. *P<0.05. ABCA7, ATP-binding cassette transporter A7; IHC, immunohistochemistry; OC, ovarian cancer.

Fig 3: The overall survival curve between patients with high ABCA7 mRNA expression and patients with low ABCA7 mRNA expression (high ABCA7 expression, n=40; low ABCA7 expression, n=39). ABCA7, ATP-binding cassette transporter A7.

Fig 4: TGF-ß1 stimulation rescues the suppression of EMT markers and migration induced by ABCA7-knockdown in SKOV-3 cell line. (A) Images are representative of three independent experiments. The protein levels of E-cadherin, N-cadherin and SMAD4 were assessed by western blot analysis. (B) All data are expressed as mean ± standard deviation (*P<0.05, compared with the sh-ctrl group; &P<0.05, compared with the sh-ctrl+TGF-ß group). (C) A Transwell assay was performed to assess migration. Cell numbers were counted and five microscopic fields were counted per insert (magnification, ×200). Relative cell numbers were analyzed. All data are expressed as the mean ± standard deviation. *P<0.05, compared with the sh-ctrl group; &P<0.05, compared with the sh-ctrl+TGF-ß group. TGF-ß, transforming growth factor-ß; sh, short hairpin RNA; ctrl, control; SMAD4, mothers against decapentaplegic homolog 4.