Not only is NOD1 important in host defense and autoimmune diseases, but recently, it has also been implicated in tumorigenesis for a number of cancers, including gastric cancer (Wang et al., 2012), head and neck carcinomas (Millrud et al., 2013), oral squamous cell cancer (Wang et al., 2014), prostate adenocarcinoma (Kang et al., 2012), and lung cancer (Ozbayer et al., 2015). The gene discussed is NOD1; the disease is cancer.