TGFB1 and cancer: Digging deeper, Fuchs and colleagues (Oshimori et al. 2015) exploited the fact that SCC CSCs are sensitive to transforming growth factor β (TGFβ), which had been reported to have both tumor-suppressing and tumor-promoting characteristics and to mark quiescent cancer cells (Malladi et al. 2016; Massagué and Sheppard 2023).