Overexpression of DKK1, an identified proinflammatory cytokine in quite a number of cancers (Chae and Bothwell, 2019), could boost malignant cell proliferation, migration, and invasiveness and give rise to unfavorable clinical outcomes in HNSCC (Shi et al., 2014; Gao et al., 2018). Here, DKK1 is linked to cancer.