In gastric cancer, overexpression of the CXCL1–CXCR2 axis is closely associated with the migration and invasiveness of malignant cells (Cheng et al., 2011), and CXCL1 release by the lymphatic endothelium promotes lymph node metastasis (Wang Z. et al., 2017). This evidence concerns the gene CXCL1 and gastric cancer.