Fig. 5

a Ratios of oncogenic to tumor suppressor HOX gene expression (O/S ratio) in mesothelioma derived cell lines. The values are the means of three experiments, error bars show the SEM. *** denotes p < 0.001 compared to the O/S ratio in the non-malignant mesothelium cell line Met-5A; (+) denotes that no expression of tumor suppressor HOX genes was detected in NCI-H28 so the ratio could not be calculated. b Correlation between sensitivity to HXR9 and O/S ratio. The IC50 for killing by HXR9 is plotted against the O/S ratio for each cell line (black dots), revealing a possible negative correlation between the two. This relationship can be modeled using a third order polynomial equation (r² = 1), which is shown as a solid black line. The O/S ratio of each primary tumor was used to calculate its predicted sensitivity to HXR9 (red dots)