Epithelial-Mesenchymal Plasticity: A central regulator of cancer progression

By X. Ye, R. Weinberg. Trends in Cell Biology, 2015

951 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) program has emerged as a central driver of tumor malignancy. Moreover, the recently uncovered link between passage through an EMT and acquisition of stem-like properties indicates that activation of the EMT programs serves as a major mechanism for generating cancer stem cells, i.e., the cells that are responsible for initiating and propagating the disease. In this review, we summarize the evidence supporting the widespread involvement of the EMT program in tumor pathogenesis and attempt to rationalize the connection between the EMT program and acquisition of stem-cell traits. We propose that the epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity is likely controlled by multiple varients of the core EMT program and foresee the need to resolve the various programs and the molecular mechanisms that underlie them.

Subfields: Molecular Biology, Oncology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e3fd4fa25a0d074922c5bb2f6326dab745f1065b

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In Molecular Biology

1. Y. Fouad
2. D. Ribatti
3. T. Annese
4. C. Aanei
5. R. Tamma

In Oncology

1. Y. Fouad
2. D. Ribatti
3. T. Annese
4. C. Aanei
5. R. Tamma

Citations in the corpus

• Understanding the intersections between metabolism and cancer biology (2017, neutral): “Role of metabolism in metastasis Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a transdifferentiation program associated with metastasis and chemotherapeutic resistance (Ye and Weinberg, 2015).”
• A Review of Cell-Based Computational Modeling in Cancer Biology (2019, background): “72-74 Cancer cells acquire a motile phenotype to escape primary tumors and invade nearby tissues (as conceptually modeled in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition [EMT] 75 ), invade and travel within blood and lymphatic vessels, 76,77 and fi nally colonize distant metastatic niches.”
• Revisiting the hallmarks of cancer. (2017, positive): “Originally described as transformative between two binary-like states: full-epithelial and full-mesenchymal, this view has been broadened by demonstrating a spectrum of intermediary phases (commonly referred to as “partial EMT”) that could progress, revert, or exist as a final state, reflecting a mo”
• Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Cancer: A Historical Overview (2020, background): “EMT activation has been associated to the generation of cancer stem cells (CSCs) [38].”