Though some studies show that the activation of the type I IFN pathway inhibits the stem-like capacities of CSCs (Doherty et al., 2017; Martin-Hijano and Sainz, 2020), a growing number of studies suggest that type I IFN (specially IFN-α) is considered as “awakening” agents for dormant CSCs, and the activated type I IFN signaling pathway actively promotes the downstream ISGs expression, induces self-renewal capacity, tumorigenic potential, expression of stem-like markers, and activates EMT in many kinds of cancers (Martin-Hijano and Sainz, 2020). This evidence concerns the gene IFNA1 and cancer.