Fig. 5: Liver parenchymal remnants in the capsule.

a mRNA in situ hybridization (ISH) of an encapsulated CRLM for albumin (ALB), nuclear stain with 4′,6-diamidino-2-phenylindole (DAPI). Arrows: ALB⁺ cells in the rim. Dashed line: liver-rim interface; dotted line: metastasis border towards the liver. Representative image of n = 4 encapsulated metastases. b Left: Whole-slide image (hematoxylin & eosin), annotated for the capsule and portal tract (PT) remnants: blue area marks the rim; red dots mark PTs consisting of artery and bile duct (A + BD), green dots mark PTs consisting of artery remnants (A). Right: Magnification, blue line marks the rim-liver interface, A remnants highlighted in blue, A + BD remnant highlighted in orange; representative of n = 49 patients. c PT density in the desmoplastic rim of encapsulated metastases from n = 49 patients, based on n = 141 whole-slide images (WSIs). d Box-and-Whisker plot of the distributions of PT arteries (A) and PT remnants consisting of artery and bile duct (A + BD). Result from two-sided Wilcoxon rank sum test is presented in the panel; based on the same data as (c). Median (line), interquartile range (box), minimum and maximum values within 1.5 times the IQR from the first and third quartiles (whiskers) and individual datapoints are shown. e Heatmap summarizing zonated expression patterns derived from different analysis modalities: immunohistochemistry (IHC, corresponding to Figs. 3a, 4d), multiplex RNA ISH (corresponding to Supplementary Fig. 5d) and multiplex immunofluorescence (m-IF, corresponding to Fig. 3e). Source data for the plots in (c, d) are provided with the Source Data file.