Finally, we examined the potential contribution of our observed relationship between altered SMAD2/3 expression and migration to the excessive accumulation of TAFs in lung cancer, since we previously reported a larger TAF density in histologic samples in ADC compared to SCC patients [6] in a small patient cohort (5 ADC, 5 SCC) (re-analysed as number density/image field in Supplementary Fig. 6a). Here, SMAD2 is linked to lung cancer.