It should also be noted that several epidemiological studies suggest that alcohol abuse not only promotes cancer progression and metastasis, it may also increase the risk of certain cancers like squamous epithelial cancer of esophagus, head and neck cancer and also breast and colon cancer (Seitz and Stickel, 2007) Furthermore, several experimental studies suggested that Snail and EMT are not only involved in cancer progression but also in cancer initiation (Hugo et al., 2007, Thiery, 2002, Thiery and Sleeman, 2006, Turley et al., 2008, Weinberg, 2008). For example, overexpression of Snail in transgenic mice results in multiple tumor types and EMT itself is associated with increased genomic instability which in turn could contribute to cancer initiation as well as cancer progression (Radisky et al., 2005). Our findings in normal, non-transformed intestinal cells that alcohol promotes EMT in non-cancer cells support the notion that alcohol-induced stimulation of EMT pathway in normal epithelial cells may be a mechanism for increased risk of cancers in alcoholics. Further studies are needed to confirm our findings in different non-cancer cell lines and primary epithelial cells.
