HOXC6, HOXC8 and HOXB7 have been shown to be prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in cancer research, including prostate cancer (Van Neste et al., 2016; Axlund, Lambert & Nordeen, 2010), gastric cancer (Chen et al., 2016), oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (Du et al., 2014), nasopharyngeal carcinoma (Jiang et al., 2015), and acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (Zhong et al., 2019). Here, HOXB7 is linked to acute lymphoblastic leukemia.