CDH11 and cancer: Since the self-renewal ability of metastatic cancerous cells has been associated to the EMT potential [21], and CDH11 implicated in both the metastatic and cancer stem cell-like phenotype of aggressive breast cancer [11] (also see Additional file 1: Figure S1), in parallel assays, we also showed that exposure to anti-CDH11 antibody elicited pronounced suppression of the mammosphere formation efficiency, as demonstrated by 2.2-fold (p < 0.01) and 1.9-fold (p < 0.01) decrease in the number of formed mammospheres, compared to the control group (Fig. 3c).