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Review
. 2013 Sep 23;12(1):107.
doi: 10.1186/1476-4598-12-107.

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition: focus on metastatic cascade, alternative splicing, non-coding RNAs and modulating compounds

Timur R Samatov  1 , Alexander G Tonevitsky, Udo Schumacher
Affiliations
Review

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition: focus on metastatic cascade, alternative splicing, non-coding RNAs and modulating compounds

Timur R Samatov et al. Mol Cancer. .

Abstract

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a key process in embryonic development and metastases formation during malignant progression. This review focuses on transcriptional regulation, non-coding RNAs, alternative splicing events and cell adhesion molecules regulation during EMT. Additionally, we summarize the knowledge with regard to the small potentially druggable molecules capable of modulating EMT for cancer therapy.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Various mesenchymal cell types can be derived via EMT. The reverse mesenchymal-epithelial transition can generate secondary epithelia.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Markers and regulators of EMT. During EMT complex changes of mRNA expression level and alternative splicing of numerous genes occur. These changes are influenced by the tumor microenvironment, transcription and splicing factors and non-coding RNAs.
Figure 3
Figure 3
The metastatic cascade. In early stage of the metastatic cascade EMT enables migration and intravasation of tumor cells. After extravasation followed by MET metastasis is generated.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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