Because cancer stemness is proposed to be a pluripotency-like phenotype, and resistance to chemo- and radiotherapy is suggested to be caused by the hypothetical low-dividing frequency of cancer stem cells, we examined the relationship of cell population heterogeneity based on the cell surface levels of GRP78 and Progranulin in OECM1, FaDu, and BM2 cells to cell cycle distributions and the relative expression of genes that are commonly used as markers for cancer stemness and developmental pluripotency. The gene discussed is GRN; the disease is cancer.