We confirmed the rationality of ECM1 as a tumour-associated antigen with a high expression level in multiple tumours, such as breast cancer, especially in triple-negative breast cancer, by analysing data collected from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database (Additional file 1: Fig. S2a), clinical tissue specimens and the corresponding clinical data (Fig. 1b, Additional file 1: Fig. S2b-f), and high ECM1 expression was closely correlated to tumour biology behaviour (Additional file 1: Tables S2, S3). The gene discussed is ECM1; the disease is breast cancer.