Comparison of biomarker positive/negative rates using either surgical or biopsy samples.

The positive/negative rate for each biomarker is comparable between the biopsy samples in this study and surgical samples profiled in our previous studies, including ATM [29] and other biomarkers [26]. A slight increase in positive rates for the biomarkers (or decrease in negative rate for ATM) was observed, which could possibly be explained by the detection of positive samples which were previously missed when analyzing surgical samples due to intra-tumoral heterogeneity. Both biopsy and surgical samples were collected from the same local hospital [26], except for ATM [29].