Involvement of kallikrein-related peptidase 6 in epithelial to mesenchymal transition induced by ΔNp63 downregulation in oral squamous cell carcinoma through activation of protease activated receptors

Recent studies showed epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is involved in cancer progression. Though we revealed that downregulation of ΔNp63 in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) induces EMT, the detailed molecular mechanisms remain to be elucidated. DNA microarray analyses were thus performed by using OSCC cell line overexpressing ΔNp63 to examine the genes associated with EMT. The results revealed that kallikrein related peptidase 6 (KLK6) was most upregulated in the OSCC cells overexpressing ΔNp63. We obtained two newly established clones: SQUU-BO with constitutive expression of DNp63b and SQUU-BC transfected with empty vector. Then, Microarray was performed for comparison between gene expression of SQUU-BO and that of SQUU-BC.