MUC5AC and cancer: Another notable result was the presence in the list of various mucin-encoding genes (MUC5B, MUC12, and MUC16), which are commonly observed mutated in many cancers and have been previously linked to colorectal, ovarian and hepatological cancers (Yin et al., 2013; Felder et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2018), as well as to severe fibrotic lung disorders (Seibold et al., 2011).