Coronary artery specimens were obtained from autopsy from the Department of Pathology of the Amsterdam UMC and immediately fixed in 10% formalin and processed for paraffin embedding. All use of tissue was in agreement with the ‘Code for Proper Secondary Use of Human Tissue in the Netherlands’. CBL-B expression was analysed by immunohistochemistry, as described in the Supplementary material online. Gene expression of CBL-B in human atherosclerosis was examined by microarray-based transcriptional profiling of carotid endarterectomy specimens (BiKE dataset13 (link),14 (link)).