We found that in all five cancer types, PGK1 pS203 and PDHK1 pT338 levels were higher in most tumor tissues than in their matched normal tissues (Additional file 1: Fig. S4), increasing from normal tissues to early-stage cancer tissues and to advanced carcinoma tissues (Fig. 5a–e), and positively correlating with each other in tumor tissues (Fig. 6). Here, PDK1 is linked to neoplasm.