HOXB7 and breast cancer: HOXB7 is a homeobox-containing gene and transcription factor that is normally expressed during development and that is aberrantly overexpressed in ovarian and breast cancer.[28,29] HOXB7 is overexpressed at both the mRNA and protein levels in biliary cancer, but is not detectable in normal biliary epithelium.[13,14] Our study demonstrated that HOXB7 mRNA was significantly highly expressed in malignant biliary stricture and was the best predictor of malignant biliary stricture among the studied genes based on the 0.898 AUC.