Reportedly, PDPN is not only expressed in various normal cells like type I alveolar epithelial cell (Rishi et al., 1995), lymphatic endothelium and kidney podocytes (Koop et al., 2008; Wetterwald et al., 1996), but also frequently upregulated in numerous malignant tumours, including hypopharyngeal cancer (Wang et al., 2017) and squamous cell carcinoma (Li & Tang, 2021; Schwab et al., 2021), as well as in tumour stroma‐containing cancer‐associated fibroblasts (CAFs) (Jsa et al., 2020). The gene discussed is PDPN; the disease is cancer.