The upregulation of TIMP1 was relative to poor prognosis of multiple cancers including colon cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer, melanoma, papillary thyroid carcinoma, renal cell carcinoma, and so on (Hawthorn et al., 2004; Wang et al., 2013; Cheng et al., 2016; Song et al., 2016; Zurac et al., 2016). Here, TIMP1 is linked to renal cell carcinoma.