Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that, for breast cancer patients who received radiotherapy, those with tumours that highly expressed FHL1 revealed significantly poorer DFS and OS than those with tumours with low FHL1 expression (DFS: P=2.814 × 10−5; OS: P=2.405 × 10−4) (Fig. 4f). Here, FHL1 is linked to breast cancer.