Further functional experiments demonstrated that the overexpression of SFPR1 in KYSE-70 and KYSE-140 cell lines could significantly increase cell proliferation in vitro or xenograft tumour growth in vivo, while SFRP1 knockdown in KYSE-450 and KYSE-520 cells exhibited the opposite effects (Fig. 1f and Supplementary Fig. 5c–j). The gene discussed is SFRP1; the disease is neoplasm.