In 2012 we hypothesised that normal developmental cell fate decisions taken by mammary progenitor cells persist in tumours that are maintained by instances of a cancerous progenitor, and that a change in the relative influence of the two major transcription factors that drive progenitor cell fate, ER to specify the hormone sensing lineage, and ELF5 to specify the ER- alveolar lineage, may allow a cancer to shift control of proliferation from estrogen to ELF5. The gene discussed is ELF5; the disease is cancer.