Fig. 1: Analysis of the relationship between MEK5/ERK5 expression and overall survival in lung cancer patients.

a Comparison between MEK5 levels (left panel) of 2437 lung tumors and 86 healthy lung samples plotted from patient data collected in the Kaplan–Meier plotter database. Data were first MAS5 normalized, and then a scaling normalization was performed to set the mean expression across all genes to 1000, as described in ref. ³⁷. ERK5 levels (right panel) were similarly represented and compared. Black dots correspond to the minimum and maximum values. p-values were calculated according to the Mann–Whitney U-test. b 240 months follow-up Kaplan–Meier analysis of the relationship between combined MEK5/ERK5 expression and overall survival in lung cancer patients (n = 1925) collected in the public Kaplan–Meier plotter database. Patients were stratified according to low or high MEK5/ERK5 expression as indicated in the methods section. The number of patients at risk in the low and high expression groups is shown. c 120 months follow up Kaplan–Meier analysis in never-smoking lung cancer patients (n = 204) calculated as in (b). d 120 months follow up Kaplan–Meier analysis in the lung cancer patient population excluding never-smokers (n = 820) calculated as in (b). e The cBioPortal database was explored in order to determine the gains and amplifications present in MEK5 and ERK5 genes of lung adenocarcinoma (n = 503) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (n = 469) patients. Copy-number alteration data was obtained from the TCGA. Patients with gains and high-level amplifications were quantified and represented as percentage from the total patients included in the study. f Overall survival curves of lung adenocarcinoma (n = 494) and lung squamous carcinoma (n = 463) patients with available clinical data from (e). Patients harboring gain or amplification in MEK5 or ERK5 (red line) were compared to those without such alterations (blue line). The p-value of the studies, follow-up (months) and median overall survival are indicated.