Elevated CTSV expression has been observed in numerous cancer types, including squamous cell, breast, colorectal and thymic epithelial malignancies (Santamaria et al., 1998; Haider et al., 2006; Sun et al., 2016; Kiuchi et al., 2017), and associated with increasing tumour grade/stage in hepatocellular and endometrial malignancies (Skrzypczak et al., 2012; Jing et al., 2018). Here, CTSV is linked to neoplasm.