Supporting this hypothesis, cancer stem cell-like cells, generated by cytotoxic T-lymphocyte-mediated immune selection of a cervical cancer cell line, showed a strong upregulation of TCL1A via transcriptional activation mediated by the stem-cell factor NANOG, which correlated with higher phosphorylation of AKT and increased tumorigenicity, as well as immune resistance [75]. Here, TCL1A is linked to cancer.