ECD and gastric cancer: Our previous study showed that ACK1 promotes gastric cancer EMT and metastasis by AKT1-POU2F1-ECD signaling axis, in which ACK1 induces phosphorylation of AKT at Thr 308 and Ser 473 to increase the expression of the transcription factor POU2F1, which regulates the expression of the novel protein ECD by binding to the ECD promoter [16].