FTH1 can be used as a tumor promoter in metastatic melanoma cells (Di Sanzo et al., 2011a), brain cancer (Rosager et al., 2017), pancreatic cancer (Su, Lei & Zhang, 2017) and a tumor suppressor in non-small cell lung cancer (Biamonte et al., 2018a) and ovarian cancer (Lobello et al., 2016), while the role of FTH1 in breast cancer is still controversial (Aversa et al., 2017b; Chekhun et al., 2014). Here, FTH1 is linked to non-small cell lung carcinoma.