We analysed tissue samples from 13 patients with DCIS and 15 patients with DCIS+IDC (Additional file 3: Table S2) with both immunohistochemistry against CD10 (myoepithelial cells) (Fig. 5a) and double immunofluorescence against p63 (myoepithelial cells) and cleaved caspase 3 (apoptosis marker) (Fig. 5b-c and Additional file 8: Figure S5). Here, CASP3 is linked to ductal breast carcinoma in situ.