Our studies and other groups demonstrated that high expression of COX‐2 contributes to tumor cell proliferation, metastasis, and drug resistance through regulating several oncogenes or cell‐cycle‐related molecules such as p53, β‐catenin, Snail1, etc, in NPC and other cancers.30, 41, 42 However, in our study, we found TNF‐α, another new molecular positively correlated with COX‐2 by RNA‐Seq. This evidence concerns the gene PTGS2 and neoplasm.