Fig. 4

Calcitriol impact on the phenotype of CAFs from tumors of patients with different clinical characteristics. Levels of PDPN (podoplanin) were assessed: A data presented for CAFs from all patients, B data presented for CAFs from tumors of patients with different clinical characteristics. Other protein levels are presented in Figure S6 in the Supplementary Materials. CAFs were treated with calcitriol (cal; 1 nM or 10 nM) for 72 h. Patients were classified into groups according to plasma 25(OH)D₃ levels (VD3, < 30 ng/mL—deficient (n = 34), > 30 ng/mL—normal (n = 17)), plasma FSH levels (< 25.8 mIU/mL—premenopausal (n = 18), > 25.8 mIU/mL—postmenopausal (n = 33)) and regional or distant metastasis presence (if any—metastatic (n = 16), otherwise nonmetastatic (n = 35)). Protein levels are presented as median fluorescence (MFI) normalized to the untreated control. Data are presented as the mean ± SEM. Statistical analysis was carried out using Student’s t-test or the Mann‒Whitney U test for single comparisons and one-way ANOVA or the Kruskal‒Wallis test for multiple comparisons. *p ≤ 0.05. **p ≤ 0.01