Furthermore, IPA upstream analysis predicted the activation or inhibition state of many important transcription factors that were previously reported to be involved in the pathogenesis of lung cancer such as FOXM1, NRF2, TP63, NKX2-1, and ATF3 (Fig. 4d and Supplementary Table S4)18,36–39. This evidence concerns the gene NKX2-1 and lung carcinoma.