Fig. 1

Increased SPAG5 expression promotes TNBC progression and correlates with poor prognosis. a SPAG5 mRNA levels in TCGA breast cancer mRNA dataset of different molecular subtypes of breast cancer. b SPAG5 mRNA levels in paired TNBC tumor tissues versus non-tumor tissues (n = 65).c Protein expression of SPAG5 in TNBC cases were examined by western blot. d Correlation of SPAG5 and ki-67 mRNA levels in GSE76250 dataset. e Correlation of SPAG5 and CD8 protein expression levels. f Representative IHC image of SPAG5 expression and CD8 expression in breast cancer specimens. g Kaplan–Meier curve of DFS and OS for TNBC patients with low expression of SPAG5 versus high expression of SPAG5 group. h Gene expression data acquired from TCGA (the group of SPAG5 mRNA high TNBC and SPAG5 mRNA low TNBC) were subjected to GSEA using GSEA v2.2.0 showed that high SPAG5 expression positively correlated with cell cycle-related signatures and G2 related signatures. i The GSEA plot showed that high SPAG5 expression positively correlated with cell ATR BRCA pathway. All *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001, n.s. not significant