In tissues, relatively higher amounts of cells expressing the stem cell marker OCT4 or NANOG were observed in keloid tissues compared with normal tissues (Fig. 2d–g and Supplementary Fig. 4a, b), and GLI1-expressing cells were present in similar proportions as cells expressing both GLI1 and OCT4 or NANOG48 (Fig. 2e, g, compared with Supplementary Fig. 4a, b). This evidence concerns the gene POU5F1 and keloid.