CD44 and neoplasm: In a similar study, Melissaridou et al. compared the properties of five HNSCC lines; when cells transitioned from 2D to 3D culture conditions, there was an increase in the expression of NANOG and SOX2, used as markers of tumor stem cells (for example, for the laryngeal carcinoma line LK1122, expression increased by 26.8 and 22.9 times, respectively), but this did not change the other marker, CD44.