CASP8 and neoplasm: According to our assessment of pretreatment tumor biopsies, 42 patients (60.9%) presented with a low expression of caspase-8, 43 (62.3%) with low CDK9 and 39 (56.5%) with low pCDK9, while 27 (39.1%), 26 (37.7%) and 30 (43.5%) patients displayed elevated levels of caspase-8, CDK9 and pCDK9, respectively (Table 1).