Figure 1.

CoCl₂ promotes the proliferation and induces EMT of OSCC cells. (A) CAL-27 cells were treated with CoCl₂ (0–500 µM) for 24 h and cell proliferation was evaluated using a CCK-8 assay. ***P<0.001 vs. 0 µM. (B) Reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was used to detect the expression levels of E-cadherin, vimentin and Snail1. *P<0.05; ***P<0.001. (C) Metformin inhibited the proliferation of OSCC cells, evaluated via CCK-8 assay. **P<0.01; ***P<0.001 vs. 0 mM. (D) CAL-27 cells were treated with metformin (10 mM) with or without CoCl₂ (300 µM). CCK-8 assay was used to compare the four groups, revealing that metformin inhibited CoCl₂-induced proliferation. *P<0.05; ^#P<0.05 vs. control. CCK-8, Cell Counting Kit-8; OSCC oral squamous cell carcinoma; EMT, epithelial-mesenchymal transition; Snail1, snail family transcriptional repressor 1.