Figure 5.
Nicotine induced epithelial to mesenchymal transition in human lung cancer cells and breast cancer cells. (A) Treatment with 1µM nicotine induced downregulation of epithelial markers E-cadherin and β-catenin, whereas it caused concomitant increase of mesenchymal proteins fibronectin and vimentin in A549 human NSCLC as well as MCF-7 and MDA-MB-468 human breast cancer cells. Quiescent cells were treated with 1µM nicotine for the indicated time-points and the expression of epithelial and mesenchymal markers was examined by immunoblotting. Western blotting for β-actin was used as the control for the assay. (B) Induction of EMT by nicotine in a dose-dependent manner. Quiescent cells were treated with the indicated amounts of nicotine for 72 hours and EMT markers examined by western blotting.