Fig. 2: AXL upregulation in TKI-resistant HCC inversely correlates with tumor infiltration of immune cells and may predict treatment response. | Cell Death & Disease

Fig. 2: AXL upregulation in TKI-resistant HCC inversely correlates with tumor infiltration of immune cells and may predict treatment response.

From: Targeting AXL induces tumor-intrinsic immunogenic response in tyrosine kinase inhibitor-resistant liver cancer

Fig. 2

A Lists of upregulated druggable targets in sorafenib-resistant HepG2 cells and lenvatinib-resistant HCC patient-derived xenograft (PDX). The numbers and the color scale bar indicate the expression fold-change of resistant samples versus sensitive samples. B Bubble plots showing the correlation analysis of AXL with immune gene signatures in sorafenib-resistant samples from the datasets GSE176151 (left) and GSE151412 (right). The color scale bar and the size of the dots indicate the Pearson correlation coefficient. C Representative multiplex immunofluorescence images (top) of staining of CD103, CD8α, AXL, and DAPI in residual xenografts after treatment with DMOS, Sora, or Lenva. Scale bar = 50 µm. D Immunotherapy response prediction (top) of TCGA-LIHC patients using Tumor immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE) analysis. Heatmap (bottom) of TIDE scores and the corresponding AXL expression (normalized count) of patients from TCGA-LIHC dataset. E Violin plot of AXL expression in immunotherapy responders and non-responders as predicted by TIDE. F Heatmap showing AXL expression, T-cell dysfunction score, and T-cell exclusion score of patients from TCGA-LIHC dataset. G Violin plots of T-cell dysfunction score (left) and T-cell exclusion score (right) in AXL-high and AXL-low patients. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001 on a two-tailed unpaired Student’s t test.

Back to article page