Since ITK expression affects the prognosis of ovarian cancer patients with regional and distant metastasis, we explored the correlation between ITK and 4,469 differentially expressed genes, and we discovered that 359 out of 4469 genes were positively correlated with ITK (Pearson r > 0.3) but 81 genes were negatively correlated with ITK (Pearson r < − 0.3; Fig. 5A and Additional file 4: Table S3). Here, ITK is linked to ovarian cancer.