Experiments in the APCMin mouse model of colon cancer also support our hypothesis for alcohol promoting cancer progression through stimulation of Snail and EMT. Snail is overexpressed in human colon cancer (Roy et al., 2005) and adenoma formation in APCMin mice is inhibited by Snail knockdown (Roy et al., 2004). Significantly, adenoma formation in these mice is enhanced by drinking alcohol (Roy et al., 2002) and recently this same adenoma formation in APCMin mice was shown to occur by an EMT-dependent mechanism with early expression of vimentin (Chen et al., 2008).
