  The electron-positron excess reported by the DAMPE collaboration recently may
be explained by an electrophilic dark matter (DM). A standard model singlet
fermion may play the role of such a DM when it is stablized by some symmetries,
such as a dark $U(1)_X^{}$ gauge symmetry, and dominantly annihilates into the
electron-positron pairs through the exchange of a scalar mediator. The model,
with appropriate Yukawa couplings, can well interpret the DAMPE excess. Naively
one expects that in this type of models the DM-nucleon cross section should be
small since there is no tree-level DM-quark interactions. We however find that
at one-loop level, a testable DM-nucleon cross section can be induced for
providing ways to test the electrophilic model. We also find that a $U(1)$
kinetic mixing can generate a sizable DM-nucleon cross section although the
$U(1)_X^{}$ dark photon only has a negligible contribution to the DM
annihilation. Depending on the signs of the mixing parameter, the dark photon
can enhance/reduce the one-loop induced DM-nucleon cross section.
