Even though other authors have shown that miR-21-5p can regulate the expression of other target genes such as PTEN, MSH2, Cdc25A, SPRY2 and PDCD4, and therefore be associated with worse response to therapy in other tumor types, we did not observe a significant inverse correlation between the expression of these target genes and of miR-21-5p in our samples (Additional file 3: Table S4) [27-31]. This evidence concerns the gene PDCD4 and neoplasm.