Fig. 1

Phenotypic and functional characterization of circulating monocyte subsets. a Bivariate dot plot histograms illustrating the identification of circulating leukocyte subsets: eosinophils (light pink events), neutrophils (yellow events), classical monocytes (blue events), intermediate monocytes (light green events), non-classical monocytes (orange events), myeloid dendritic cells (mDCs, light blue events), lymphocytes (purple events), and basophils (green events), and an example bivariate dot plot histogram illustrating TNFα production (indicated with dashed rectangle) by classical monocytes after stimulation with LPS and IFN-γ. b Dot plots with the frequency of classical monocytes, intermediate monocytes with mid-level surface expression of HLA-DR (HLADR⁺), intermediate monocytes presenting high-level surface expression of HLA-DR (HLADR⁺⁺) and non-classical monocytes producing TNFα, after stimulation with LPS plus IFNγ, in cholangiocarcinoma (CCA, N = 8) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC, N = 20) patients, both at T0 and T1, and in the healthy group (HG, N = 10). Statistically significant differences were considered when p < 0.05; * between the groups indicated in the figure and the HG