CD34 and cancer: Several of these cancer-associated genes identified as being regulated during CD133+/CD34+ cell expansion are new and still not fully functionally characterized in the literature, such as MS4A6A, FNBP3, DOCK4, and SPARCL1. Differential expression of these genes, in addition to other identified early E2-regulated genes displaying aberrant expression in tumors was confirmed in CD133+/CD34+ cells by quantitative real-time PCR (Fig.3), validating the microarray data.