BCAT1 and cancer: Most malignant tumors exhibit elevated levels of BCAT1, which is associated with malignant phenotypes in various cancers, such as nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) (Zhou et al., 2013), gastric cancer (Qian et al., 2023), melanoma (Mao et al., 2021), and astrocytoma (Tönjes et al., 2013), as well as poor prognosis in cancer.