Fig. 4: USP29 expression correlates with enhanced cancer stem cell features and poor prognosis in lung cancer.

The prognosis data of lung cancer patients were retrieved from the KM-plotter website (www.kmplot.com), showing correlations between USP29 expression and overall survival in total lung cancer (a), lung squamous carcinoma (LUSC, b), and lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD, c). Patients were split by medians of USP29 expression. d RNA-seq data of indicated DUBs in 517 LUAD patients from TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas) were retrieved from the cBio Cancer Genomics Portal (http://cbioportal.org). Mean RPKM (reads per kilobase of exon per million reads mapped) of individual DUB genes was calculated to enable the quantitative comparison. e Characterization of H1299 and H1975 cells stably expressing USP29 in parallel with vector control stable cell lines. f Representative images from transwell assays using H1299 and H1975 cell lines stably transfected with pCDH and pCDH-USP29 as indicated. g Column charts show quantification data of migrated cells per microscopic view on average from three biologically independent experiments. (h), representative images of spheroids formed by H1299 and H1975 stable cell lines after day 8 and 15. Scale bar = 50 μm. i Column charts show relative quantification of spheroid numbers compared to pCDH control groups for H1299 and H1975 cells stably expressing USP29, respectively (n = 3). All error bars represent the standard error of the mean (SEM), with *p value < 0.05 and **p value < 0.01.