LUSC clinical samples and cell lines

A total of 150 case samples using paraffin sections for the immunohistochemistry assay and 3 case samples from fresh tumor tissues and corresponding normal tissues for cell viability assay were collected from LUSC patients who had undergone resection at the Department of Thoracic Surgery II of the Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute. Informed consent was obtained from all of the participants with the approval of the ethics committee in Peking University Cancer Hospital & Institute.

The LUSC cell lines H520 and SKMES-1 were obtained from the American Type Culture Collection, and EBC-1 was retrieved from Deutsche Sammlung von Mikroorganismen und Zellkulturen. These cells were maintained in RPMI-1640 or DMEM medium with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) (Thermo Fisher Scientific) in 5% CO₂ at 37°C. After cleaning any mycoplasma contamination, the cell lines were authenticated using polymorphic short tandem repeat loci analyses.