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Article History

Received: 16 October 2018

Accepted: 25 February 2019

First Online: 2 April 2019

Ethics approval and consent to participate

: All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Ethical approval for this study was provided by the Northern Ireland Biobank (Ref: NIB12–0043) which has ethical approval to use de-identified tissue samples from the NHS tissue pathology archives with matched de-identified data (REC: 16/NI/0030), and also from the Research Ethics Committee, Beaumont Hospital (Ref: 11:18). Corresponding tumour slides and blocks were retrieved and collated via the Northern Ireland Biobank. In accordance with the Human Tissue Act, consent is not required for use of archived, de-identified tissue in research studies with ethical approval.

: Not applicable.

: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

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