About the Authors

Yong Gao

Affiliation Department of Medical Oncology, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Jing Zhu

Affiliation Department of Medical Oncology, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Xiaohui Zhang

Affiliation Department of Medical Oncology, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Qingquan Wu

Affiliation Department of Thoracic Surgery, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Shaoning Jiang

Affiliation Department of Medicine, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama, United States of America

Yangqing Liu

Affiliation Department of Medical Oncology, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Zhibin Hu

Affiliation Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

Baorui Liu

hayycxf@163.com (XC); baoruiliu@hotmail.com (BL)

Affiliation The Comprehensive Cancer Center, Gulou School of Clinical Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, China

Xiaofei Chen

hayycxf@163.com (XC); baoruiliu@hotmail.com (BL)

Affiliation Department of Medical Oncology, Huai'an First People's Hospital, Nanjing Medical University, Huai'an, China

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: YG BL XC. Performed the experiments: JZ XZ QW. Analyzed the data: SJ YL ZH. Wrote the paper: YG XC.