2005). Highly expressed OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG are closely correlated with advanced disease stage and poor prognosis in cancer (Yang et al. 2018). During the rapid growth of tumour cells, glycolysis is an essential metabolic mode of tumour cell due to insufficient oxygen supply (Ganapathy-Kanniappan and Geschwind 2013). Glycolysis promotes the malignant progress of tumour through providing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) for tumour cell proliferation, invasion and metastasis. Therefore, glycolysis targeted therapy is an important strategy for the treatment of lung cancer (Granchi et al. 2014). The gene discussed is POU5F1; the disease is neoplasm.