**Acknowledgements**

This work was partially supported by the Italian Association for Cancer Research (AIRC)- Special Program Molecular Clinical Oncology AIRC 5x1000 project N° 9965 (to Prof. Federi‐ co Caligaris-Cappio) and by local funds of the University of Brescia (to GM). We wish to thank Prof. F. Caligaris-Cappio (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele, Milano) for helpful dis‐ cussion and dr. Maurilio Ponzoni (Department of Pathology, San Raffaele Scientific Insti‐ tute, Milan) for the precious contribution to histochemical analyses.
