Among all of the genes that were positively correlated with ASXL3 expression, we found that the expression of achaete-scute family bHLH transcription factor 1 (ASCL1), a lineage oncogenic transcription factor in SCLC [37], was enriched approximately 400 times as much in ASXL3-high group SCLC cell lines compared to ASXL3-low group SCLC cell lines (Fig. 1e and Additional file 2: Figure S1C) and vice versa (Additional file 2: Figure S1D). Here, ASCL1 is linked to small cell lung carcinoma.