Moreover, overexpression of MELK is observed in cancer stem cells (Ganguly et al., 2014; Hebbard et al., 2010; Liu et al., 2006), associated with undifferentiated phenotype (Rhodes et al., 2004), poor prognosis (Nakano et al., 2008; Pickard et al., 2009), and chemo and radioresistance (Choi and Ku, 2011; Kim et al., 2015; Speers et al., 2016). Here, MELK is linked to cancer.