In IHC, we found that the patients with Oct4 (p=0.024) and EpCAM (p=0.005) high expressions had significantly worse prognosis than those with low expression in Kaplan-Meier analyses (Figure 4). The differences between low expression and high expression of Lgr5 (p=0.163), CD133 (p=0.308), CD54 (p=0.204) and Sox2 (p=0.055) were not significant (Figure 4). To eliminate the potential bias from TNM stage, we compared the prognosis between low and high expressions of these markers stratified by TNM stage (Figure 5). We found that the prognostic differences were significant between Oct4 low and high expressions in TNM IV stage (p=0.045), EpCAM low and high expression in TNM I stage (p=0.045) and TNM II stage (p<0.001). We found that more patients received chemotherapy in EpCAM low expression group than EpCAM high expression group (p=0.003). To eliminate the influence of chemotherapy, we compared the prognosis of patients with or without chemotherapy between EpCAM low and high expression. Kaplan Meier curve showed that although there were no significant differences between EpCAM low and high expression in patients with (p=0.078) or without chemotherapy (p=0.126), the trend that EpCAM high expression group had worse prognosis than low expression group was still visible (Figure 6). In Cox regression of patients with all markers tested except Sox2, no markers were the independent prognostic factors. Instead, we found that age (p=0.006, HR=1.303, 95%CI [1.052-1.613]), tumor size (p=0.041, HR=1.255, 95%CI [1.010-1.559]) and TNM stage (p<0.001, HR=2.038, 95%CI [1.633-2.544]) were independently related to prognosis. For Cox regression of patients with Sox2 tested, we found that age (p=0.001, HR=1.477, 95%CI [1.165-1.873]), Sox2 (p=0.013, HR=0.616, 95%CI [0.421-0.901]) and TNM stage (p<0.001, HR=2.008, 95%CI [1.597-2.526]) were independently associated with prognosis. The results showed that the patients with Sox2 high expression had significantly better survival outcomes than those with Sox2 low expression.