SOX9 and non-small cell lung carcinoma: We classified the 142 paraffin-embedded, archived NSCLC clinical specimens according to TNM stage (Table 1 and Fig. 1a) and found that SOX9 expression levels were positively associated with the T (p = 0.030), N (p = 0.000), and M (p = 0.032) stages (Table 2 and Fig. 1a).