Importantly, we observed a significant inverse correlation between FOXO3a and FOXM1/SOX2/DNMT1 expression levels, and a significant positive correlation between FOXM1, SOX2, and DNMT1 in the breast cancer tissue set (Fig. 6d, e and Fig. S10), which was consistent with our finding in vitro and in animal model. Here, SOX2 is linked to breast carcinoma.