Colorectal carcinogenesis: Insights into the cell death and signal transduction pathways: A review

Figure 2 Mechanism of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in colorectal cancer. External stimuli or mutations in cancer cells induce epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), where epithelial cells undergo phenotypic changes and transit into an invasive mesenchymal cell state. Mesenchymal cells invade the systemic circulation and undergo a mesenchymal-to-epithelial transition (MET) in distant organs, thus facilitating metastasis.