Fig. 1: Correlation between hexokinase expression levels in HCC tumors and patient survival.

a Kaplan–Meier estimates of the survival of HCC patients depending on the expression of HK1, HK2, HK3 and GCK (HK4) genes in tumor biopsies (n = 365; diploid samples; TCGA expression data retrieved from cBioPortal; Firehose Legacy)74,75. Duplicate analyses from the same patient were removed as well as patients who died when biopsied (overall survival=0 months or not specified). Optimal stratification based on highest and lowest gene expression values was determined using Protein Atlas database18. b Same as above but patients were stratified based on the GCK/HK2 gene expression ratio. The stratification showing the lowest p value when comparing subgroups of patients with the highest to the lowest GCK/HK2 expression ratio is displayed. Patient TCGA-DD-AAE9 exhibiting undetectable levels of GCK and HK2 was removed from this analysis as the GCK/HK2 ratio could not be calculated. c Correlations between patient survival, GCK expression and HK2 expression. Spearman’s rank correlation test on the subset 130 patients for whom the period between diagnosis and death is precisely known (uncensored data).