Fig. 6

Genes associated with mitochondrial fission correlate with better overall prognosis in breast cancer. a Gene expression and clustering of high (red) and low (gray) levels of PAI1, EPCAM, and PISD in primary circulating tumor cells (CTCs) from patients with metastatic breast cancer. Each dot represents a single CTC (n = 666 CTCs from 21 breast cancer patients). PAI1, a gene known to correlate with poor prognosis in breast cancer, defines a cluster associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and EPCAM defines the right cluster containing genes previously associated with mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET). b, c Kaplan–Meier curves for metastasis-free survival over time among patients whose primary tumors had high versus low levels of PISD (b) or Mfn1 and Mfn2 (c). Percentage indicates metastasis-free survival at endpoint, and p values represent significant differences in outcome between all groups displayed on the graph. d–g Box plot and whiskers for gene expression of PISD (d) and Drp1 (e) (mitochondrial fission), and MFN1 (f) and MFN2 (g) (mitochondrial fusion) in patients that were either dead or alive at 5 years after the initial pathological diagnosis (alive at 5 years: n = 58, dead at 5 years: n = 21 from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)). Line within the box denotes the median, and the “+” symbol denotes the mean. Dashed line represents median expression of the gene of interest in patients alive at 5 years