To further confirm the correlation between PAX6 and ZEB2, we analyzed PAX6 and ZEB2 protein levels in 15 pairs of NSCLC and adjacent tissues, and we observed a significant positive correlation between PAX6 and ZEB2 (r2 = 0.6506, P < 0.0001; Fig. 5e). Here, ZEB2 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.