PRNP and neoplasm: Previous research has established that heat shock 70-kDa protein 1-like (HSPA1L) is crucial in promoting CRC proliferation via HIF-1α activation and cellular prion protein (PrPC) regulation within tumor niches (Lee et al., 2017), and its expression has already been linked to CRC prognosis (Lee et al., 2019; Huang et al., 2024).