Fig. 3

mRNA expression of tissues derived from healthy volunteers and CRC patients [70]. For analyzing gene expression of stage II CRC tumors, we obtained the dataset GSE44076 consisting of tissue expression data of 50 healthy volunteers (healthy) as well as 98 CRC samples (tumor) and paired normal adjacent mucosa (normal). a–f upregulated stromal markers; g: SerpinB5. Overall, expression increased from healthy to normal and again from normal to tumor tissue; h, i for mast cell and macrophage markers, expression was highest in the normal tissue compared to both healthy and tumor tissue, with the tumor showing the lowest expression. Statistical analysis for differential gene expression was perfomed by using empirical Bayesian statistics with FDR detection according to the Benjamini–Hochberg method. *p < 0.05; **p < 0.01; ***p < 0.001; ns not significant