Moreover, both in cancer-adjacent and cancer-distant small intestine mucosa of CD patients, foci of relatively immature SOX-9-positive crypt hyperplasia, often with topographic continuity with the invasive neoplasm and associated with the other typical CD inflammatory changes, have been demonstrated, suggesting, in such a condition, the possibility of an inflammation-hyperplasia-dysplasia-carcinoma sequence [107,110]. Here, SOX9 is linked to cancer.