Quantification of the immunofluorescence staining results revealed that the CD271+Ki67+ population was significantly increased in moderate/severe dysplasia, carcinoma in situ, and squamous cell carcinoma as compared with normal epithelial tissue, and that the CD271+Ki67+ population tended to increase from normal to increasingly cancerous tissue (Fig. 1F, Supplementary Figure S1). Here, NGFR is linked to squamous cell carcinoma.