Previous publications have demonstrated a role for SPOCK1 in cancer types such as breast cancer (Fan et al., 2016), prostate cancer (Chen et al., 2016; Yang et al., 2015), glioblastomas (Yu et al., 2016), urothelial carcinomas (Ma et al., 2016), ovarian cancer (Zhang et al., 2015), esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (Song et al., 2015), gallbladder cancer (Shu et al., 2015), lung cancer (Miao et al., 2013), and hepatocellular carcinomas (Li et al., 2013). The gene discussed is SPOCK1; the disease is esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.