In agreement with our results, previous data showed that Nanog+ Huh7 cells exhibited increased chemoresistance, self‐renewal, sphere formation ability and in vivo tumour incidence compared to Nanog− Huh 7 cells (Shan et al., 2012) when considering the Oct4 and Nanog transcription factors as gatekeepers of pluripotency (Lee et al., 2017; Seymour et al., 2015). Here, POU5F1 is linked to neoplasm.