Although the activation of HIF-1α acts as an adaptive response to hypoxia for cells, its prolonged activation is deleterious to hypoxic cells, and overexpressed HIF-1α has been reported to be associated with tumor growth, cancer metastasis, and poor prognosis, and tumor chemotherapy resistance (Shoshani et al., 2002; Goda et al., 2003; Wei et al., 2013; Doktorova et al., 2015; Zhang et al., 2015). Here, HIF1A is linked to cancer.