Mining the publicly available clinical tumor expression datasets [R2: microarray analysis and visualization platform (http://hgserver1.amc.nl/cgi-bin/r2/main.cgi)] revealed the decreased ITLN1 transcript levels in some kinds of cancer, including colon cancer, lung cancer, renal cancer, prostate cancer, and NB (Additional file 1: Figure S1A). Here, ITLN1 is linked to cancer.