We also performed western blotting to detect the expression of claudin-11, -23 in 58 cases of gastric cancer and paracancerous superficial gastritis at the protein level, and found that levels of claudin-11, -23 proteins were also significantly lower in gastric cancer than that in the paracancerous superficial gastritis (P = 2.75*10−4, P = 0.012 respectively; Fig 2). Here, CLDN11 is linked to gastric cancer.