Fig. 4: Enrichment of endothelial cells in AFP– HCC. | Nature Communications

Fig. 4: Enrichment of endothelial cells in AFP– HCC.

From: Androgen receptor promotes arachidonic acid metabolism and angiogenic microenvironment in AFP-negative hepatocellular carcinoma

Fig. 4: Enrichment of endothelial cells in AFP– HCC.The alternative text for this image may have been generated using AI.

a Cell proportion analysis of each cell cluster between AFP− HCC and AFP+ HCC patients, as shown by boxplots and pie charts. P values are displayed only for cell types with significant differences between the two groups (AFP− HCC vs. AFP+ HCC = 6:11). b Endothelial cell proportion deconvoluted by xCell using bulk RNA-seq from FAH-SYSU cohort (AFP− HCC vs. AFP+ HCC = 161:273) and TCGA-LIHC cohort (AFP− HCC vs. AFP+ HCC = 142:127), which showed higher infiltration of endothelial cells in AFP− HCC. c Representative images of IHC staining in FFPE tissues (left panel) and microvascular density quantification (right panel) in AFP− HCC and AFP+ HCC. The number of dots indicates the number of patients (AFP− HCC vs. AFP+ HCC = 10:10). Data were shown as mean ± SD. Scale bars, 50 μm. d The UMAP visualization of four subtypes of endothelial cells (upper panel) and corresponding tissue distribution (lower panel). e Marker gene expression for endothelial cells. f Pathway enrichment analysis for endothelial cells using GO-BP gene sets. g Functional scoring of endothelial cell phenotypes based on tip-like and stalk-like gene signatures. *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001, and ns stands for not significant by Wilcoxon rank sum test in (a, b), two-sided t-test in (c) and Wilcoxon rank sum test with FDR correction (g). Source data are provided as a Source Data file.

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