The enriched TICs of CCS and HT29 showed less apoptosis than their bulk cancer cells at 24 h of suspension with serum deprivation as evident by TdT-mediated dUTP nick end labelling (TUNEL; Fig. 2a,b) as well as Annexin V/PI (propidium iodide) assay (Supplementary Fig. 1a), independent of culture dishes used to enrich TICs. The gene discussed is DNTT; the disease is cancer.