Fig. 7

Molecular signature. (A) Heatmap of differentially expressed genes in different HCC stages. Genes detected by quantitative reverse transcription PCR (RT-qPCR). The rows represent genes, and the columns represent replicates of 3D HUH-7, 3D Mixed organoids, compared to HUH-7 2D cells. Blue indicates “downregulation” and yellow indicates “upregulation”. The clustering is done using the complete-linkage method together with the Euclidean distance measure. (B) The corresponding gene expression analysis of the same panel of genes represented by a bar chart of HUH-7 cells, HUH-7 2D, 3D HUH-7 organoid, and 3D Mixed organoids. Values represent relative gene expression mean ± SD. ^*p < 0.05, ^**p < 0.01, and ^***p < 0.001 respectively