Existing studies presented that highly expressed ITGBL1 facilitates breast cancer bone metastasis and ovarian cancer cell migration and adhesion (Li X.Q. et al., 2015; Sun et al., 2016), while down-regulated ITGBL1 promotes cell invasion in non-small cell lung cancer (Gan et al., 2016). Here, ITGBL1 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.