POSTN and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: Our data was consistent with other studies which also showed that POSTN and COL11A1 were more highly expressed in tumor tissues than normal tissues (Raglow and Thomas, 2015; Yu et al., 2018), POSTN could promote cancer stemness in ovarian cancer and head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) (Malanchi et al., 2011; Yu et al., 2018), and COL11A1 could facilitate fibroblast activation through modulating the TGF-β pathway and contribute to metastasis and poor clinical outcomes in ovarian cancer (Cheon et al., 2014; Wu et al., 2021).