HOXB7 and cancer: 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).