The gene expression-based tissue compartments were then generated based on specific expression patterns of an 8-gene set, which we refer to as tumour gene signature, containing the genes EREG, MET, BIK, CD44, ITGAV, MYBL2, CCND1 and S100A4. This tumour gene signature achieved the highest mean overlap of 77% for neoplastic tissue compartments between morphological- and expression-based tissue compartments (Fig. 2c). Here, CD44 is linked to neoplasm.