However, in parallel comparison between early recurrence and late recurrence, the major impact of nodal stage should be considered. Recently, many investigators sought to distinguish patients who are at risk for early relapse versus late relapse in ERpositive breast cancer using biomarkers or molecular approaches. These novel methods provided important information in understanding the tumor biology associated with early and late recurrence of ER-positive disease. However, our results suggested that the profound influence of nodal stage on early recurrence should not be overlooked. Prior to parallel analysis of early recurrence and late recurrence, adjustment for the effect of nodal stage is necessary. In a previous study, Kennecke et al. already reported that T and N stages predicted late relapse and death from estrogen responsive early breast cancer in postmenopausal women. In contrast to our study, the authors compared two groups stratified by cohorts without and with late recurrence. Therefore, the different prognostic impact of nodal stage on early vs. late recurrence in ER-positive disease was not explored. To suppress recurrence, endocrine therapy has been an integral part of adjuvant treatment modalities in ER-positive patients. The endocrine agents provided a great survival benefit for women with ER-positive breast cancer, and selective estrogen receptor modulators and/or aromatase inhibitors stabilizing reproductive division labor maintaining link physiological state foraging behavior showed a significant reduction in recurrence after treatment completion. The protective carryover effect of endocrine therapy was similarly noted in this analysis.Significant survival benefits in diseases like breast and colorectal cancer especially through the development of several new molecular entities. Nonetheless in cholangiocarcinoma respectively cancers of the biliary tract the treatment choices remain very limited. Cholangiocarcinoma seems to be a cancer with an inhomogeneous genetic design influenced by multiple molecular aberrations limiting the successful application of conservative approaches to find new treatments by simply adding new molecular entities to classical cytotoxic regimes. Identifying patient subgroups with more aggressive subtypes of CCC at risk for a shortened survival may lead to improved trial designs and hence to a more effective strategy in treating this disease. By previous work we already identified several candidate biomarkers that are associated with the overall survival of patients in various cancer types. These genes have a strong correlation with angiogenesis and lead to alterations of the extracellular matrix and remodeling of subepithelial and subendothelial basal membranes and therefore seem to be directly involved in the aggressiveness of cancers. All genes were run on all samples in triplicates, i.e. one sample was run with each gene three times on the same plate to identify potential outliers. The detection of amplified cDNA results in a cycle threshold value, which is reciprocal to the amount of cDNA contained in the sample.