In a small study of 40 patients, Toiyama et al. [47] demonstrated that responders (tumour regression of >2 pathological grades) to nCRT demonstrated significantly lower levels of HIF-1α (and VEGF and EGFR) gene expression on pretreatment biopsies than non-responders (tumour regression of ≤1 pathological grades). The gene discussed is EGFR; the disease is neoplasm.