摘要：Cancer tissue sampling affects the identification of cancer characteristics. We aimed to clarify the source of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in macro-dissected cancer tissue and develop a robust prognostic signature against the effects of tissue sampling. For estrogen receptor (ER)+ breast cancer patients, we identified DEGs in macro-dissected cancer tissues, malignant epithelial cells and stromal cells, defined as Macro-Dissected-DEGs, Epithelial-DEGs and Stromal-DEGs, respectively. Comparing Epithelial-DEGs to Stromal-DEGs (false discovery rate (FDR) −16, binomial test), whereas the score was only 52% between Macro-Dissected-DEGs and Inconsistent-DEGs (P-value = 0.9, binomial test). Among the gene ontology (GO) terms significantly enriched in Macro-Dissected-DEGs (FDR
