Fig. 7: The clinical significance of CCL5 in predicting prostate cancer prognosis.

a The CCL5 mRNA expression differences between different tissues or different groups of prostate cancer patients. CCL5 expression increased in prostate cancer tumor tissues when compared with nonmalignant prostate tissues. Castration-resistant prostate cancer patients exhibited increased CCL5 expression when compared with patients with good prognosis. Metastatic prostate tumors exhibited increased CCL5 expression when compared with primary prostate tumors. The following datasets were analyzed including GSE6919 (n = 93), GSE21034 (n = 179), GSE37199 (n = 106), and GSE46691 (n = 545). b Enrichment analysis indicated that CCL5 was positively correlated with stem cell-related genes. c There were significant positive correlations between the expression levels of CCL5 and stemness-related genes including CD133 and STAT3 (n = 93). d High CCL5 expression in prostate cancer patients predicted poor overall survival (n = 82) and poor progression-free survival (n = 34). e A commercialized prostate tissue microarray containing 90 prostate cancer tissues and 90 para-carcinoma tissues was analyzed. Prostate cancer patients with high Gleason grade exhibited increased CCL5 expression (p < 0.05). CCL5 overexpression was observed in prostate cancer tissues when compared with para-carcinoma tissues (p < 0.05). There were significant positive correlations between CCL5 and PCSCs-related proteins including ALDH1A1 and STAT3 (n = 180) in the samples of human prostate cancer tissue microarray. Scale bar, 100 μm.