HOXA9 and breast carcinoma: By performing 3C PCR assays in MCF7 and MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells and MCF10A normal breast cells, we confirmed that the HOXA9 and HOXA10 promoters physically interacted each other, while the HOXA11 promoter did not interact with the HOXA9 or HOXA10 promoter (Fig. 3a and Additional file 1: Figure S2).