In addition, exposure of cultured OSCC cells to palmitic acid, a dietary fatty acid recognized by CD36 (ref. 29), for 2 days also robustly increased the percentage of CD36+ cells (Extended Data Fig. 6e). Palmitic acid increased the size and frequency of lymph node metastases in a manner dependent on CD36, without affecting primary tumour growth. Notably, palmitic even promoted lung metastasis in 10% of mice, something we did not observe in the more than 100 mice inoculated with control SCC-25 tumour cells (Fig. 3b).