ESR1 and malignant colon neoplasm: In our experiments, the colon adenocarcinoma cell line, HCT8-β8, transfected to overexpress ERβ was used because the ERβ-mediated role of phytoestrogens or phenolic compounds in colon cancer has previously been investigated in this cell line [23,24], and colon cancer lines overexpressing ERβ have been used to study the anticancer role of this estrogen receptor [21].