Spearman’s rank correlation analysis revealed that the mRNA expression of ATF3 and MMP2 positively correlated with the pathological grade of glioma (ρ= 0.621, P<0.01 and ρ=0.503, P<0.01, respectively), while the mRNA expression of maspin negatively correlated with the pathological grade of glioma (ρ=−0.415, P<0.01). Here, ATF3 is linked to central nervous system cancer.