BIRC3 and cancer: Among differentially expressed genes, we selected BIRC3 for functional analysis, because (i) it is a member of the inhibitors of apoptosis (IAPs) gene family (43) that serves key oncogenic roles in many cancers (44, 45); (ii) BIRC3 protein was over-expressed in parallel with mRNA in most TSCC biopsies compared to thymomas (Figure 4); and, (iii) the thymic carcinoma cell line, 1889c (22) with strong BIRC3 expression was available (Figure S2 in Supplementary Material).