For IHC analysis, sections were incubated with primary antibodies [1:100 dilution; anti-PPRA antibodies were purchased from Cell Signaling Technology (Proteintech), the anti-Ki67 antibody was purchased from Zsgb Bio (Beijing, China) and the anti-CD34 antibody was purchased from Abcam] overnight at 4 °C, followed by a 1 h incubation at 37 °C with a biotinylated secondary antibody (1:100 dilution). The samples were then incubated with horseradish peroxidase-labeled streptomycoidin and DAB (diaminobenzidine), counterstained with hematoxylin, and visualized using a light microscope.
For the IHC analysis, we quantitatively scored the tissue sections according to the percentage of positive cells and staining intensity. We assigned the following proportion scores: 1 if 0–25% of the tumor cells showed positive staining, 2 if 26–50% of cells were stained, 3 if 51–75% of the cells were stained, and 4 if 76–100% of the cells were stained; we also divided the different expression levels into four different groups (1 to 4) and scored them.