BMP7 and neoplasm: Then, we assessed which genes are correlated with SOX2. As shown in Fig. 1, 57 genes (e.g., BMP7) were positively correlated with SOX2 while 11 genes (e.g., CDKN1A) were negatively correlated with SOX2 in lung SCC, suggesting that these genes might be regulated by SOX2 in lung SCC cells; however, it remains unknown whether the gene-to-gene correlation would be intrinsic or extrinsic since the TCGA lung SCC data contains gene expression from heterogeneous cell populations, including not only tumor cells but also tumor-associated cells.