In early phases of tumour progression TGF-β usually functions as a tumour suppressor whereas in later phases it promotes malignancy (Yang et al. 2010; Suriyamurthy et al. 2019) mainly by acting as the main inducer and driver of EMT, leading to tumour progression towards metastasis (Hao et al. 2019). The gene discussed is TGFB1; the disease is neoplasm.