DCLK1 and cancer: DCLK1’s role in initiation of tumor growth (Westphalen et al., 2016), development metastasis (Ito et al., 2016), epithelial—mesenchymal transition (EMT) (Weygant et al., 2015; Chandrakesan et al., 2016b), cancer stemness, and pro-survival signaling has been demonstrated by experiments both in vivo and in vitro (Chandrakesan et al., 2014; Dandawate et al., 2019).