By sponging miR-126-5p and miR-20b-5p, MALAT1 up-regulates the expression of tumor cell stemness proteins such as Oct4 and Nanog and metastasis-associated molecules such as VEGF, SNAI2, and TWIST, and thereby enhances colorectal cancer stem cell self-renewal, colorectal cancer cell proliferation, migration, metastasis in vitro, and tumorigenicity in mice (Sun et al., 2019; Tang et al., 2019). The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is neoplasm.