MMP2 and glioblastoma: To confirm that MMP9 was expressed by immune cells, we sorted the CD31 + cells from fresh glioblastoma samples and the CD45+ cells from the remaining tissue to analyze their MMP9 protein expression by cytometry (N = 3; Fig. 4D, E) and their MMP9 and MMP2 mRNA expression by reverse transcriptase-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) (N = 5; Fig. 4F and Additional file 1: Fig. S6).