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The social aspects of EMT-MET plasticity

Although the importance of epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT) is acknowledged in tumor metastasis, the contribution of the reverse process—MET—to cancer progression has been unclear. A new study shows that the miR-200 family regulates MET and metastatic colonization in breast cancer, suggesting that flexible transitions between EMT and MET, or epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity, may be crucial at different stages of metastasis (pages 1101–1108).

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Figure 1: Potential roles of EMP in carcinoma progression supported by current literature and Korpal et al.7.

Katie Vicari

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Correspondence to I Haviv.

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Thompson, E., Haviv, I. The social aspects of EMT-MET plasticity. Nat Med 17, 1048–1049 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm.2437

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