Total RNA was reverse-transcribed using qScript XLT cDNA SuperMix (Quantabio) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. cDNA was used as a template for the real-time reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) based on the 5′ nuclease chemistry with ABI PRISM 7500 sequence detection system (Applied Biosystems, Switzerland), using the following assay-on-demand reagents (Applied Biosystems): PARP1 (Hs 00242302_m1); TGFBR1 (Hs 00610318_m1); TGFBR2 (Hs 00234253_m1); BCL6 (Hs 00153368_m1). As previously reported,14 (link) PUM1 (Hs 00472881_m1) was used as a reference for normalisation and relative expression analyses. The comparative cycle threshold method (Applied Biosystems) was used for calculations of relative quantitation of targets.