Fig. 1: Low expression of pro-apoptotic proteins Bax, Bak and Smac correlates with increased progression-free survival (PFS) in chemotherapy-treated metastatic melanoma.

a Tissue cores stained by IHC for Bax, Bak and Smac. Representative original (left panels) and mark-up images (right panels) of cores with low, medium and high expression of the three proteins are shown. The mark-up images were quantified to compute automated H scores. Table insert shows cohort information. b Distribution of H scores across the analysed melanoma tissue cores. Only stained cores that passed the quality control were retained for subsequent analyses (Bax n = 100 cores from 52 patients, Bak n = 100 cores from 51 patients, Smac n = 104 cores from 53 patients). c Survival analysis based on H scores for Bax, Bak and Smac. Median H scores were used as cutoff to separate the patients with high (red line) and low (blue line) expression of each protein. Log-rank test was used to compare the Kaplan–Meier curves for progression-free survival from the date of sample procurement.