Besides the fact that brain, lung and liver metastatic dissemination was considerably reduced in immunocompetent vs immunodeficient hosts, EpRas breast cancer cells recovered from metastatic disease sites in BALB/c mice exhibited a different transcriptional profile than their counterparts from NSG mice, including increased levels of Havcr2. While TIM-3 is mostly (but not exclusively) expressed by immune cells, Havcr2 mRNA levels were confirmed to be increased in a fraction of human breast cancer cells. Here, HAVCR2 is linked to metastatic neoplasm.