Further clinical validation of the regulation of the IL6Rα and NRF2 pathway by CD109 was obtained using proteomic and genomic analyses of HPV-negative HNSCC patient data from the Linkedomics database and the TCGA dataset at the cBio Cancer Genomics Portal, respectively [3, 12]. The gene discussed is NFE2L2; the disease is head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.