MCF10A (Human breast epithelial cells, ATCC, Manassas, VA, USA), MCF-7, and MDA-MB-231 (BC cells, Cell Bank of Chinese Academy of Science, Shanghai, China) were maintained in Dulbecco’s modified Eagle’s medium (DMEM) supplemented with 10% FBS, 100 units/mL penicillin and 100 mg/mL streptomycin (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA) under condition of 5% CO2 flow at 37°C. DOX‐resistant MCF‐7 (MCF‐7/DOX) and DOX‐resistant MDA-MB-231 (MDA-MB-231/DOX) cells were generated by continuous exposure of MCF‐7 or MDA-MB-231 cells to gradient concentrations of DOX (Sigma‐Aldrich, St Louis, MO, USA) [19 (link)]. In addition, in this study, 1.5 μg/mL DOX was applied for the treatment of BC cells, and 30 μg/mL DOX was used to treat DOX-resistant BC cells.