In our study, we found NKILA was upregulated by classical TGF-β pathway and had higher expression level in early stages (TNM stageIandII) than advanced stages (TNM stage III and IV) of NSCLC (p = 0.048, Table 1), which was consistent with the dual roles of TGF-β in cancer. Here, TGFB1 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.