Fig. 7: Clinical relevance of USP14 in CRC patients.

a Representative images of USP14 and IDO1 IHC staining in human CRC specimens. Scale bars, 50 µm. b Percentage of samples showing low or high IDO1 levels in 119 human CRC specimens relative to the level of USP14. χ² test (two-sided). c Kaplan–Meier analysis for CRC patients stratified by high versus low levels of USP14 (log-rank test, P = 0.001, n = 119). d Representative images showed multiplex immunofluorescence staining of two cases of CRC and the tumor infiltrating lymphocyte (TIL) identification strategy. Each marker was represented by a different color as indicated in the panel, scale bars, 50 µm. White boxes indicated the representative image, based in the CD3 and CD8 marker expression. CK cytokeratin. Scale bars, 25 µm. e Quantification of CD3⁺ and CD3⁺CD8⁺ T cells analyzed by multiplex immunofluorescence staining in USP14-high (n = 77) and USP14-low (n = 42) CRC tissues. The lines represented the minimum, first quartile, median, third quartile, and maximum of the number of CD3⁺ and CD3⁺CD8⁺ T cells. Two-sided Student’s t-test. f Schematic representations of the role of the USP14/IDO1 axis in immune suppression and ICB resistance in CRC (Created with BioRender.com). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.