Fig. 1

Mast cells accumulate in GC tumors with disease progression and predict poor patient survival. a Mast cell percentage in CD45⁺ cells or (c) the total number of mast cells per million total cells among TNM stages (I + II vs III + IV) in each tissue of patients with GC by gating on CD45⁺CD117⁺FcεRI⁺ cells or counting. Cumulative results from 114 GC patients were shown. b Dot plots of surface molecule staining for mast cells gating on CD45⁺ cells. d Representative analysis of tryptase⁺ (brown) mast cell distributions in tumor tissues of GC patients by immunohistochemical staining. Scale bars: 100 μm. e and f Intratumoral mast cell percentage (e) or mast cell number (f) among TNM stages was compared. Kaplan-Meier plots for overall survival by median mast cell percentage (9.315%) (e) or median mast cell number (4749 per million) (f). The horizontal bars in panels a, c, e and f represent mean values. Each ring in panels a, c, e and f represents 1 patient. **, P < 0.01; n.s., P > 0.05 for groups connected by horizontal lines. MC (%), mast cell percentage; MC (NO.), mast cell number