SOX2 and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Since differentially expressed genes of the transcriptome data of HNSCC in TCGA dataset have been reported (Cancer Genome Atlas, 2015; Yan et al., 2016), we further examined the expression profiles of the selected genes (i.e., IRF1, IFNAR2, FOXP3, TMEM173, CD47, PECAM1, BMI-1, TWISTNB, ALDH1L1, PROM1, EGFR, SOX2, TGFB1, SMAD3, and STAT3) in the primary tumors of HNSCC.