One hallmark of Snail expression and EMT is increased cell migration/invasion (Nieto, 2002, Thiery, 2002). We wished to assess whether ethanol stimulated migration of cancer cells. We used MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells because our data show alcohol stimulates MMPs and Snail activation and expression in these cells (see above). As shown in Figure 6D, cells stimulated with TNF-α alone showed a significant 2.6-fold migration versus control (p ≤.05, ANOVA with Dunnett post Hoc test). Alcohol stimulated an additional 3-fold increase in migration through inserts together with TNF-α (100ng/ml). This migration was blocked by inhibitors of either the EGFR (AG1478, 500nM, 83%inhibition), or TACE (TAPI-2, 20μM, 82%inhibition), or ERK1/2 (PD98059, 30μM, 88%inhibition)(p ≤ .05, ANOVA with Dunnett post Hoc test).
