First, we showed that treatment of four colorectal cancer cell lines with low ZBTB18 expression and high promoter methylation with the demethylating agent decitabine (5-aza-2′-deoxycytidine) resulted in a significant increase of ZBTB18 mRNA expression (Additional file 1: Fig. S8a). Here, ZBTB18 is linked to colorectal cancer.