TCGA is available from the website of the Cancer Genomics Browser of the University of California, Santa Cruz (https://genome-cancer.ucsc.edu/). MICA and MICB mRNA expression and miRNA-sequencing level 3 data in BC patients were extracted from TCGA's data portal. Only patients with fully characterized tumors, TNM stage, overall survival, complete miRNA information were included. In total, data on 1096 BC patients with detailed miR-20a, MICA and MICB expression were collected from TCGA's data portal. Read counts for both mRNAs and miRNAs were used as input for survival analysis with the R package edgeR.46, 47 Kaplan–Meier plots for MICA or MICB expression in association with overall survival were calculated with the R program. Patients were split into high and low expression groups based on the median expression of MICA or MICB. For correlation analysis, the patients with values that were too low (<100) or too high (≥4000) for MICA/B mRNA or miR-20a expression were excluded (N=1042).