AXL and malignant colon neoplasm: In the present study, we investigated whether the mRNA expression levels of the two transcriptional co-activators in the Hippo pathway, TAZ and YAP, correlate with the mRNA expression of AXL and CTGF. In the 290 colon cancer patients from the GSE14333 dataset, TAZ expression was significantly correlated with both AXL (Spearman's rank test, r = 0.547, p<0.001; Figure 1A) and CTGF (r = 0.543, p<0.001; Figure 1B) expressions.