Interestingly, exposure of cancer cells to CM harvested from p65 inhibitor pre-treated rCAFs also reduced their colony formation in the presence of DDP or 5’FU, compared with the cells treated with placebo pre-treated rCAFs (Supplementary Fig. 5g–i), whereas it had no obvious effect on the colony formation in the cancer cells exposed with either CM from p65 or TGFα-depleted rCAFs or siNSC transfected rCAFs in the absence of chemotherapeutic drugs (Supplementary Fig. 5d–i). Here, TGFA is linked to cancer.