About the Authors

Bingbing Dai

Contributed equally to this work with: Bingbing Dai, Shaoyu Yan

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Shaoyu Yan

Contributed equally to this work with: Bingbing Dai, Shaoyu Yan

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Humberto Lara-Guerra

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Hiroyuki Kawashima

Affiliations Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Nigata University Graduate School of Medical and Dental Sciences, Nigata, Japan

Ryo Sakai

Affiliations Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Okayama Citizens’ Hospital, Okayama, Japan

Gitanjali Jayachandran

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Mourad Majidi

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Reza Mehran

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Jing Wang

Affiliation Department of Bioinfomatics and Computational Biology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

B. Nebiyou Bekele

Affiliations Department of Biostatistics, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America, Gilead Sciences, Foster City, California, United States of America

Veerabhadran Baladandayuthapani

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Suk-Young Yoo

Affiliation Department of Bioinfomatics and Computational Biology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Ying Wang

Affiliation Department of Bioinfomatics and Computational Biology, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Jun Ying

Affiliation Department of Biostatistics, UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Feng Meng

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Lin Ji

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Jack A. Roth

jroth@mdanderson.org

Affiliation Section of Thoracic Molecular Oncology, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, University of Texas (UT) MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas, United States of America

Competing Interests

J. A. Roth is a consultant, stock owner (including pending patent) in Genprex, Inc.; and Reza Mehran has a sponsored research agreement with Genprex, Inc. All other authors have declared that no competing interests exist. 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: BD SY HLG HK RS GJ JR. Performed the experiments: BD SY HLG FM GJ. Analyzed the data: VB SYY YW JY LJ JR MM. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: BD SY HLG HK RS GJ MM RM JW BNB VB SYY YW FM LJ JR. Wrote the paper: JR MM.