CD44 and neoplasm: These slow-cycling stem cell-like subpopulations manifest a panel of tumor-related alterations such as EMT-mediated increase in invasiveness and tumorigenic potential, ability to reproduce heterogeneous tumor cell population, upregulation of the Hh/TGF-β pathway, partial overlap with the CSC markers CD24/CD44, CD133, and ALDH and evasion of chemotherapy-induced death stimuli [233].