SMAD9 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes: Based on the result of IHC of FERMT2, FKBP3, SMAD9, GATA2 and ITIH4, we divided the patients into 2 groups (negative group and positive group); the characteristics of each group are shown in Table 2.We found that the positive expression of FERMT2, FKBP3, SMAD9, GATA2 and ITIH4 had a correlation with the TNM stage, cellular differentiation and the lymph node metastasis (p < 0.05).