Fig. 1

Membranous PSMA expression of PL is heterogeneous in clinical samples obtained from patients with HSPC at initial diagnosis of PCa. (A) Scatter plot of PSMA MHscore and age, showing no correlation was observed. (B) Scatter plot of PSMA MHscore and log(tPSA + 1). Due to the wide distribution of tPSA, a mathematical transformation was applied. However, no significant correlation was observed before or after the transformation. (C) Box plot of PSMA MHscore distribution across ISUP groups. Significant differences across subgroups are marked in the plot. (D) Membranous PSMA expression at the initial HSPC status. Expression of membranous PSMA quantified by H-score and presented in order of increasing MHscore. Degree of PSMA heterogeneity was measured by Shannon’s diversity index (SDI) and depicted as heat map ranging from low heterogeneity (light green) to high heterogeneity (dark green). PSMA-negative cases are indicated with a dashed line in the plot with the definition as MHscore ≤ 20. (E) Head-to-head comparison bar plots showing the expression profiles of other well-established TAAs in PSMA-negative HSPC cases. (F) Box plot showing the comparison of MHscore for well-established TAAs in PSMA-negative HSPC cases. Significant differences across subgroups are marked in the plot, *represents p < 0.05, **represents p < 0.01, ***represents p < 0.001.