In recent years, more and more research groups have paid attention to the important role of G6PD in various cancer cells, including colorectal cancer, cervical cancer, renal cell carcinoma, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, lung cancer and head and neck cancer (Di et al., 1997; Lucarelli et al., 2014; Catanzaro et al., 2015; Fang et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2016; Ju et al., 2017; Zhang et al., 2017). The gene discussed is G6PD; the disease is head and neck cancer.