Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition related transcription factors are upregulated in ependymomas and correlate with a poor prognosis

Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role in invasion and metastasis of various cancers including gliomas. EMT has also been linked to cancer stem cells and resistance to chemotherapy. An initial in-silico data mining in a published ependymoma (EPN) patient series (GSE21687) revealed upregulation of EMT-Transcription factors (EMT-TFs) in tumor samples. Further, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (q-RT-PCR) based gene expression analysis of EMT-TFs in 96 EPNs showed significant up-regulation of SNAI1, SNAI2, ZEB1, and TWIST1 as compared to normal brain, associated with upregulation of CDH2/N-Cadherin and downregulation of CDH1/E-Cadherin.

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