In cisplatin-resistant oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), TGF-β regulated cancer cell stemness through a SMAD-independent pathway: TGF-β inhibited the function of the tumor suppressor FOXO3a through the AKT pathway, which resulted in increased expression of stemness markers, such as SOX2 and ABCG2 (Li et al., 2019d); the same phenomenon was also observed in epirubicin-resistant three negative breast cancer (TNBC) cells (Xu et al., 2018). This evidence concerns the gene TGFB1 and cancer.