EPSTI1 and breast cancer: We found that Mixture cores exhibit upregulation of EPSTI1, a gene induced by epithelial–stromal interaction in breast cancer (Nielsen et al. 2002), while Separative cores show elevated expression of metabolic stress-associated genes such as B4GALT2 (related to glycolysis) and DHCR24 (involved in cholesterol biosynthesis) (Liu et al. 2018).