Tumours initiate these responses through several mechanisms including hypoxia and derived factors.66 Hypoxia was reported to shape the immunosuppressive microenvironment of the tumour.67 The positive correlation between HIF1a and FOXP3 in our study supports such a hypothesis and shows the crosstalk between tumour microenvironment components in DCIS progression. The gene discussed is HIF1A; the disease is ductal breast carcinoma in situ.