Epithelial to mesenchymal transition concept in Cancer: Review article

Owing to this fact that most of the mortalities in cancers are as a result of metastasis, study on the involved pathways in metastasis including Epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) would be so critical and important. Up to date, several extensive studies have been carried out to determine the correlation between EMT and cancer and their results have shown that the EMT plays pivotal role in initiation of metastasis, invasion and recurrence of cancer besides drug resistance. In this pathway which is occurred naturally during fetal development and wound healing, cellular phenotype undergone various changes as well as increased in capability of migration and invasion and the involved epithelial cells transform to semi-fibroblast mesenchymal cells. There are some reports that have shown that mesenchymal cells share the same gene expression and phenotype profile with cancer stem cells (CSCs). This probability has enhanced the correlation between cancer and EMT. CSCs are tumor cells that have the ability to self renew and tumorgenesis through differentiation. It was demonstrated that this pathway has led to metastasis through CSCs induction. In this review article, it was attempted to discuss about the current knowledge about the effect of EMT on cancer development such as formation of CSCs, its regulatory factors and also EMT inhibition and cancer treatment