Recent evidences have shown that EMT factors are associated with stemness in cancer cells, suggesting the existence of a link between EMT and CSCs.33, 34 We hereby tested the effect of the NMI/hTERT signaling on the metastasis-related properties, and found that NMI knockdown upregulated the expression of EMT-related proteins, while NMI overexpression downregulated the EMT-related proteins in breast cancer cells (Figure 5a). This evidence concerns the gene NMI and breast cancer.