As one of the genes targeting tretinoin, the overexpression of pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase 4 (PDK4) was found to promote tumor cells proliferation and invasion by negatively regulating the IL-10 expression in macrophages and thus indicated poor prognosis (Atas et al., 2020; Na et al., 2020), which was in accordance with results obtained in the present study. The gene discussed is PDK4; the disease is neoplasm.