Fig. 1

Overexpression of GLUT4 correlates with poor survival in HNSCC patients. a The heatmap indicates the correlation between the mRNA expression level of glucose transporters and HNSCC metastasis. Note that GLUT4 is the only gene that is significantly correlated with metastasis events in the Rickman Head–Neck cohort (n = 36) in the analysis by the Oncomine online tool. b The box plot shows that higher GLUT4 expression was correlated with a poor survival rate in patients in the Petel HNSCC cohort (E-MTAB-1328, n = 89) from the SurvExpress database (HR = 3.37, P = 0.043). c The expression level of the GLUT4 protein in tumor tissue compared to the corresponding normal adjacent tissue. d Scores (0~3) indicating GLUT4 levels in representative head and neck squamous tumor tissues. e Kaplan–Meier curves of overall and disease-free survival of 90 patients with HNSCC, stratified by a high or low GLUT4 protein expression level (P = 0.017 and P = 0.001, respectively)