These results were in accordance with Liu et al., which showed FoxP3 was significantly down-regulated in cancer stem cell-like cells of colorectal cancer, and forced expression of FoxP3 significantly decreased self-renewal ability of cancer stem cells including reduced side population, cancer stem cell marker CD133 expression, colonosphere formation ability in vitro, as well as tumor formation ability in vivo (Liu et al. 2017). Here, FOXP3 is linked to colorectal cancer.