Fig. 1

The expression of STAT3 is positively related to METTL3 in HCC. A The relationship between METTL3 and the overall survival of HCC patients was assessed by the GEPIA online tool. B The relationship between METTL3 and relapse-free survival of HCC patients was assessed by the Kaplan–Meier Plotter online tool. C Western blotting analysis of STAT3 and METTL3 in different HCC cell lines (lower panel). The upper panel is the quantification of the intensity relative to tubulin. D IHC staining of METTL3 and STAT3 in para-tumor tissues, HCC tissues and metastatic tissues from HCC tissue microarray. The right image is an enlarged view of the black box in the left image. Scale bar, left image:100 μm; right image, 20 μm. E The association between the expression levels of METTL3 and STAT3 in the tissue microarray was statistically analyzed by Spearman correlation analysis, r = 0.656, p < 0.001. F, G Statistics of average optical density of METTL3 (F) and STAT3 (G) in metastasis (n = 43) and non-metastasis (n = 18) tissues. H, I Western blotting analysis of STAT3 and METTL3 in 10 paired HCC tissues (T) and non-tumor tissues (NT). (H) shows the quantification of intensity of METTL3 and STAT3 relative to tubulin. All experiments were repeated at least three times. Error bars represent mean ± SD. *P < 0.05, **P < 0.01, ***P < 0.001 by 2-tailed Student’s t-test