SPARC and colorectal carcinoma: We recently defined CAFs-associated genes (CAFGs) based on the following: (1) close association (R = 0.9 or beyond, underlined throughout this paper) with the expression of SPARC, a well-known stromal marker of human cancers [5,16], in cancer stroma of colorectal cancer (CRC) tumors (GSE35607); and (2) stromal specificity (stroma/epithelia expression ratio, SE ratio = 10 or beyond) like SPARC (SE = 17.2) [17].