Fig. 1

HUMT is responsible for triple-negative breast cancer lymph node metastasis. a The establishment of triple-negative cell lines with highly lymph node-invasive ability in mice. b Representative picture for LNM3 (left) and parental (right) cells with different lymph node-invasive ability in mice. c Schematic procedure of microarray detection of LNM3 and parental cells. d Heatmap and e volcano plot profiling identified the top significant RNA alteration. f The upregulation of HUMT in LNM3 cells was further validated by qRT-PCR. g Lymph node metastasis-free survival analysis and h metastatic lymph node ratio of mice injected with modulated 231LNM3 and 549LNM3 cells. i The representative picture and the corresponding volume of lymph nodes in different groups (231LNM3). j Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated a better OS and DFS in patients with low HUMT expression. k qRT-PCR identified a significantly higher level of HUMT in primary TNBC with lymph node metastasis compared with paracancerous tissue and primary TNBC without lymph node metastasis. Data were shown as mean ± SD; *P < 0.05; **P < 0.01