Dawson H, et al. - Experts sought to evaluate potential protagonists that could be applied in a combined score (budding/T cell score, BTS). A descriptive, retrospective study was conducted on a multi punch tissue microarray containing material from 345 individuals with stages I–IV colorectal cancer (CRC). For pancytokeratin/CD3, pancytokeratin/CD8 and pancytokeratin/CD45RO, areas from tumour centre, front and microenvironment were stained. In comparison with budding or T cells alone, a combined BTS to be stronger in predicting survival and certain features with high clinical relevance, such as nodal metastases, although CD8+/CD3+ T cells are predictive of tumour biology in CRC. Additional investigations combining T cell infiltrates and tumour budding are required to optimize the risk estimation of CRC.