CASP3 and neoplasm: In the groups with high caspase-3 activity, the disease-free survival was found to be the best for patients with a high tumour caspase-3 activity and low M30 antigen level (Figure 2H; group 4 vs groups 1 and 2, log-rank value: 5.68, P=0.02), which strengthened our notion that stromal apoptosis in the tumour is an important prognostic factor for the patients' disease-free survival.