In addition, the phenotypic profile of xenograted tumors derived from ALDH+/GD2+ cells showed intratumor heterogeneity, similar to the parental tumors, and the sorted ALDH+/GD2+ cells could be serially passaged in mice for more than three generations (Additional file 1: Table S7).These findings support the notion that ALDH+/GD2+ expression could serve as a marker to enrich cancer initiating cells in malignant PTs. The gene discussed is LDHA; the disease is cancer.