About the Authors

Luciano Cascione

Contributed equally to this work with: Luciano Cascione, Pierluigi Gasparini

Affiliations Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America, Department of Clinical and Molecular Biomedicine, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

Pierluigi Gasparini

Contributed equally to this work with: Luciano Cascione, Pierluigi Gasparini

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Francesca Lovat

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Stefania Carasi

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Alfredo Pulvirenti

Affiliation Department of Clinical and Molecular Biomedicine, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

Alfredo Ferro

Affiliation Department of Clinical and Molecular Biomedicine, University of Catania, Catania, Italy

Hansjuerg Alder

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Gang He

Affiliation Department of Pathology, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, Division of Pathology II, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Andrea Vecchione

Affiliations Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America, University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Ospedale Santo Andrea, Rome, Italy

Carlo M. Croce

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Charles L. Shapiro

These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Division of Medical Oncology and the Breast Program James Cancer Hospital and Ohio State University Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Kay Huebner

kay.huebner@osumc.edu

These authors also contributed equally to this work.

Affiliation Department of Molecular Virology, Immunology and Medical Genetics, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and Comprehensive Cancer Center, Columbus, Ohio, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Edited the MS: FL LC CLS SC. Coordination of tissue collection and clinical databases: CLS. Conceived and designed the experiments: KH CLS PG. Performed the experiments: GH PG FL SC. Analyzed the data: LC AP AF. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: HA AV CMC. Wrote the paper: KH PG.