First, SALL4 regulates the self-renewal of cancer stem cells by targeting a variety of genes, such as upregulation of Bmi-1, Wnt/β-catenin and HoxA9 and repression of PTEN, a tumor suppressor gene (Ma et al., 2006; Lu et al., 2009; Li et al., 2013; Zhang et al., 2014). Here, SALL4 is linked to cancer.