Fig. 3: SOX10’s regulatory network is associated with multipotency, cell migration and poor prognosis in TNBC.

a Relative expression of eight predominant transcription modules in human breast tumours, according to the PAM50 subtype (TCGA dataset). b SOXE-module co-expression profile similarity matrix, clustered to highlight genes with very highly coordinated expression. The similarity is based on cosine distance and has a maximum value of 1. SOX10 mapped to one of six module sub-clusters, the members of which are shown to the right of the matrix. See also Supplementary Fig. 4a, b. c Summary of results from unsupervised gene set enrichment analysis of the breast cancer transcriptome after ordering transcripts according to their correlations with SOXE-module expression (denoted by the ME value, TCGA dataset). d Tile plot showing overlapping expression of SOXE-module representatives. For each protein, significant co-expression with ≥2 other module members is indicated by a Fisher’s exact test result (*p < 0.05; ***p < 0.001; ****p < 0.0001). Refer to Supplementary Table 1 for scoring criteria. e IHC staining of representative SOXE-module nodes in serial sections from the same tumour. f Proportional expression of all eight modules (coloured as for (a)) in TNBCs annotated with PAM50 and TNBC subtypes (METABRIC dataset; LAR luminal androgen receptor-like, MES mesenchymal, BLIS basal-like immune-suppressed, BLIA basal-like immune-activated³⁹). g Kaplan–Meier analysis of METABRIC TNBCs expressing different proportions of the three predominant TNBC modules. BCSS breast cancer-specific survival. ME fraction thresholds for classifying cases as high or low were 0.33 for SOXE/blue and 0.1 for yellow.