Using another independent lung cancer patient cohort for which we generated tumourspheres, and also purified for CD166+ cells, we indeed confirmed miR-1246 and miR-1290 expression to be elevated more than fivefold in CD166+ TICs, and increased 6 and 30 times, respectively, in the corresponding patient-derived tumourspheres when compared with either normal lung epithelial cells or CD166− non-TICs (Fig. 1d). The gene discussed is ALCAM; the disease is lung carcinoma.