Fig. 4: Crosstalk between TAF and Tumor cells.

A The bubble plot of ligands and receptors involved in significant L-R pairs between TAFs and tumor cells from diversity-high tumors. B t-SNE plots showing the expression profiles of COL1A1, COL4A1, and COL6A2 of TAF in the diversity-high and diversity-low groups. The level of ITGA2, ITGAV, and ITGA1 from the diversity-high and diversity-low groups of tumor cells. C Representative cores of COL1A1 and ITGA2 staining in the tissue microarray. Bar, 100 μm. D Positivity for the expression of COL1A1 and ITGA2 in the tissue microarray. E The correlation between COL1A1/2 and ITGA2 in TCGA patients. F Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of COL1A1 and ITGA2 at high or low levels in tumors from the TCGA database. G, H The capacity of colony formation was detected by sphere formation assays in Huh7 cell lines. Cells with or without co-cultured with CAFs were knocked down ITGA2 or treated with COL1A1 inhibitor for 3 days. Bar, 100 µm. At least two independent experiments were performed for all data. For curve Figures and bar Figures, data are presented as means ± SD. Unpaired Student’s t-tests were used for comparing two variables. One-way ANOVA was used for multiple variables comparison. *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01; ***P < 0.001; n.s, no significance in comparison with control group. See also Fig. S2.