Fig. 7

LINC01977 is a promising predictor of poor outcome in early-stage LUAD. A Representative H&E and immunofluorescence staining serial sections of patients with LUAD clinical stage I, II, and III. TAM2 was significantly high infiltrated at invasive margin in early-stage LUAD (stage I) patients. CD68, red; CD206, green; and nuclei, DAPI, blue. CD68⁺/CD206⁺ indicated TAM2. Scale bars: 200 μm. B Relative expression of LINC01977 detected by qPCR from different clinical stage of LUAD in our cohort. C For all patients in our cohort, shown is the number of TAM2 around invasive margin (y-axis) versus the different LUAD clinical stages (x-axis). D Correlation analysis of LINC01977 expression by qRT-PCR detection and infiltrated TAM2 numbers in our cohort. (E) ATAC-seq analysis of super-enhancer region in different expression of TGF-β in TCGA-LUAD dataset. F In TCGA-LUAD dataset, patients with high protein expression of SMAD3 were also with high expression of LINC01977. G Kaplan–Meier analysis of the DFS in LUAD clinical stage I + II patients with different TGF-β signaling pathway hallmarks levels, as determined using TCGA-LUAD dataset. H–J Kaplan–Meier analysis of the DFS in LUAD clinical stage I (H), II (I) and III + IV (J) patients with different LINC01977 expression levels, as determined using TCGA-LUAD dataset. K Graphic abstract. Figure in K was created using BioRender. Data in A and F are representative of three independent experiments and presented as mean ± S.D., n = 3 biologically independent samples, and the P value was determined by a two-tailed unpaired Student’s t test and one-way ANOVA, respectively