About the Authors

Bruno Christian Koehler

bruno.koehler@nct-heidelberg.de

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Anna-Lena Scherr

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Stephan Lorenz

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Toni Urbanik

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Nicole Kautz

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Christin Elssner

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Stefan Welte

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Justo Lorenzo Bermejo

Affiliation Institute of Medical Biometry and Informatics, University Hospital Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Dirk Jäger

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Henning Schulze-Bergkamen

Affiliation National Center for Tumor Diseases, Department of Medical Oncology, Internal Medicine VI, Heidelberg University Hospital, Heidelberg, Germany

Competing Interests

Henning Schulze-Bergkamen received research grants as well as reimbursement of conference travel costs and honoraria from Merck Serono GmbH. None of the authors is related to Merck Serono by employment, consultancy, patents and products in development or market products. No product of Merck Serono has been used or investigated in the manuscript. Merck Serono GmbH was not involved in the experiments or preparation of the manuscript. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: BCK ALS SL TU NK HSB. Performed the experiments: BCK ALS SL CE NK. Analyzed the data: BCK ALS TU JLB DJ HSB. Wrote the paper: BCK ALS TU DJ HSB SW.