In contrast, some miRNAs restrain cancer progression through targeting Tspans [for example, CD151 with miR-199a-3p (Kim et al., 2016) and miR-124 (Liu et al., 2016) in hepatocellular carcinoma, Tspan1 with miR-573 and miR-216a in pancreatic cancer (Wang et al., 2020; Wang et al., 2021), with miR-194-5p in cholangiocarcinoma (Wang X. et al., 2018), and with miR-573 in gastric cancer (Lu et al., 2015)]. This evidence concerns the gene TSPAN1 and cancer.