Fig. 4

Overexpression of HDGF correlates with poor survival of HCC patients. A Expression levels of HDGF were analyzed using four public HCC data sets (GSE54236, GSE22058, GSE25097, TCGA-LIHC). HDGF expression was significantly higher in HCC tissue than in adjacent non-tumorous liver tissue. Tukey box-and-whisker plot. *p < 0.05, ****p < 0.0001; two-tailed Student’s t test. B HDGF expression levels of the TCGA-LIHC cohort were divided according to histologic tumor grade. *p < 0.05; one-way ANOVA with Tukey’s multiple comparisons test. C Expression values of HDGF and survival data of the TCGA-LIHC cohort were retrieved from OncoLnc [32]. Patients were grouped into low (lower median) or high (upper median) HDGF expression levels. Kaplan–Meier with log-rank test