We found that salivary gland tumors induced by Plag1 overexpression contained CD44hi cells that incorporated BrdU at a low cycle rate and retained BrdU better than CD44neg cells; and that CD44hi cells have higher levels of transcripts of stem cell related genes, Oct-4, Nanog, Sox2 and telomerase. Here, PLAG1 is linked to tumor of salivary gland.