ATR and cancer: To our knowledge, this is the first study that investigates mutations in ATR, ATM, and MRE11-RAD50-NBN genes in LARC using a NGS-dedicated panel specifically designed for FFPE samples as most studies have in fact evaluated gene mutations between the two groups using large cancer panels that are commercially available in which ATM sequences are usually present and RAD50 sequences are seldom present [15,22,23].