Fig. 6: The expression pattern of Hmgcs2/HMGCS2 during foetal liver development and HCC, and its clinical relevance in HCC.

a Hmgcs2 expression levels during mouse liver development from GSE57824 dataset. P < 0.0001 by Kruskal–Wallis test. b Hmgcs2 expression levels during mouse liver development from GSE13149 dataset. c HMGCS2 expression intensity in HCC tissues (n = 225) and noncancerous liver tissues (n = 220) according to the GSE14520 dataset. d Kaplan–Meier survival analysis of the correlation between HMGCS2 expression and overall survival of HCC patients according to GSE14520 dataset. P = 0.0005 by log-rank test. e HMGCS2 expression intensity in HCC tissues (n = 81) and noncancerous liver tissues (n = 80) according to the GSE54236 dataset. f HMGCS2 expression intensity in 72 pairs of HCC tissues and noncancerous liver tissues according to the GSE39791 dataset. g HMGCS2 expression intensity in human normal liver tissues (n = 10), cirrhotic liver tissues (n = 13), low-grade dysplastic liver tissues (n = 10), high-grade dysplastic liver tissues (n = 7), very early HCC tissues (n = 8), early HCC tissues (n = 10), advanced HCC tissues (n = 7) and very advanced HCC tissues (n = 10) according to GSE6764 dataset. P = 0.0005 by Kruskal–Wallis test. h qRT-PCR analysis of HMGCS2 expression in 40 pairs of HCC tissues and adjacent noncancerous liver tissues. i IHC staining of HMGCS2 in human tissue array including 70 pairs of HCC tissues and nontumor liver tissues. For c and e–i, data are shown as median with interquartile range. **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001, ****P < 0.0001 by Mann–Whitney test (c, e) or Wilcoxon matched-pair signed-rank test (f, h, i).