These results confirmed that the components of the TGF-β signaling pathway modulate the expression of Sca-1 in a cell type-specific manner: while the basal-to-luminal ratio in Comma-Dβ was not affected by its own TGF-β family ligands, the TGF-β1 secreted by ANV cancer stem cells changed the expression of its target gene Sca-1 in the autocrine fashion. Here, TGFB1 is linked to cancer.