Among the mechanisms largely associated with the metastatic conversion of epithelial cells and the EMT, the loss of E-cadherin-mediated cell adhesion is prominent [3, 4]. The Akt/PKB family

of kinases is a downstream effector of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and is frequently activated in human cancers, including OSCC [5–8]. Recently, activation of the PI3K/Akt axis is emerging as a central feature of EMT. selleck Akt-induced EMT involves downregulation of E-cadherin, which appears to result from upregulation of the transcription repressor Snail. Akt activity is induced by ligand stimulation of PD0332991 growth factor receptors such as the insulin-like growth factor-I receptor (IGF-IR) and the EGF family of receptors [9]. Ligand stimulation activates PI3K, the upstream activator of Akt, by direct binding to either the activated phosphorylated receptor LDN-193189 purchase or to adaptor proteins phosphorylated by receptor kinase activity [10]. Phosphoinositides generated by PI3K activity trigger activation of Akt kinases through direct binding to the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain and the subsequent phosphorylation of Akt at two conserved residues [11]. Therefore, we used an Akt inhibitor, structurally modified phosphatidylinositol ether lipid analogues (PIA) [12], that specifically binds to the PH domain of Akt. Recently, it was proposed

that carcinoma cells, especially in metastatic sites, could acquire the 4��8C mesenchymal-to-epithelial reverting transition (MErT) in order to adapt the microenvironments and re-expression of E-cadherin be a critical indicator of MErT [13, 14]. Therefore, it seems to be important to investigate which molecules or inhibitors could induce MErT in cancers. However,

the precise mechanism and biologic or clinical importance of the MErT in cancers have been little known in in vitro and in vivo study. The purpose of our study was to investigate whether Akt inhibition by PIA treatment would restore the expression of E-cadherin and β-catenin, reduce that of Vimentin, and induce the MErT in OSCC cells with low or negative expression of E-cadherin. We also investigated whether inhibition of Akt activity would affect the E-cadherin repressors, including Snail, Twist, and SIP-1/ZEB-2 and signaling molecules like NF-κB, ERK, JNK, and p38. Materials and methods Cell culture and reagents KB, SCC-15, SCC-25 (American Type Culture Collection, Manassas, VA), HSC-3, HSC-4, Ca9-22 (from Dr. T. Takata, Hiroshima Univ.), and KOSCC-25B (from Dr. BM Min, Seoul National Univ.) [15, 16] human OSCC cells were cultured in DMEM supplemented with 10% fetal bovine serum (FBS) and antibiotics (100 U/ml penicillin and 100 μg/ml streptomycin). Akt inhibitor PIA (SH-5) was purchased from Calbiochem (Gibbstown, NJ).