The oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) cell line with a high epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) score is associated with strong stromal infiltration in vivo. (a) Heatmap showing expression of 14 EMT genes [12] and derived EMT scores in four oral cancer cell lines: OC3, C9, OEC-M1, and TW2.6; (b) Schematic workflow of animal study. s.c., subcutaneous injection. Box plots show smaller tumor volumes were detected in OC3-NOG mice compared to that in the TW2.6-NOG mice in two independent experiments; (c) RNA-seq analysis of cell line-derived xenografts (CDXs) from OC3- and TW2.6-NOG mice. (Upper) Reads of tumor cells (hg38) and stromal constituents (mm10) for each CDX were determined by using two pipelines published previously [24,25]. Results from both methodologies revealed OC3 CDXs contain higher fractions of stroma reads. Bar plot shows percentages of tumor and stroma reads in each CDX. Student t-test was used to evaluate the difference between OC3 and TW2.6 mouse reads derived from pipeline 1.