Consistent with this, lactate supplementation also increased in the A549 and H358 cell lines the proportion of the subpopulations characterized by elevated GLDC, Aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity and SOX2 expression, critical markers associated with heightened tumor initiation capacity [12, 34] (Fig. 1d and Supplementary Fig. S1e). This evidence concerns the gene SOX2 and neoplasm.