Fig. 7

Analysis of the impact of anti-PD-1 treatment on cell–cell communication in CRC. A and B Re-clustering and annotation of epithelial cells (A) and endothelial cells (B). This section provides a re-clustered and annotated view of epithelial and endothelial cells, enabling a deeper understanding of their interactions. C Cell–cell communication probability between epithelial cells and endothelial cells: this panel quantifies the probability of cell–cell communication between epithelial cells and endothelial cells, shedding light on the efficacy of anti-PD-1 treatment on VEGFA-VEGFR axis. D Kaplan–Meier analysis of overall survival, disease-free survival, and progression-free survival was used to compare the prognosis of CRC patients based on the optimal cut-off value of the proportion of endothelial cells. Log-rank test was used to calculate the P value. The proportion of endothelial cells was calculated based on the TCGA-CRC dataset (N = 592) via the TIMER 2.0 database. E WB analysis revealed that silencing NAT1 promoted the expression of VEGFA, whereas overexpressing NAT1 inhibited VEGFA expression in CRC cells. Comparison of sh-NC with sh-NAT1 and OE-NC with OE-NAT1 via unpaired t-test. The experiments were independently repeated at least three times. Statistical significance is denoted as *P < 0.05