{"entity":{"id":"paper-thiery-emt-tumour-progression-nrc-2002","kind":"paper","name":"Thiery 2002: epithelial-mesenchymal transitions in tumour progression","aka":[],"tldr":"The review that brought the developmental idea of epithelial-mesenchymal transition into cancer biology, proposing it as the mechanism by which carcinoma cells detach, invade and travel to distant sites.","summary":"Thiery reviewed the evidence that carcinomas use an epithelial-mesenchymal transition to progress: loss of E-cadherin-based junctions, cytoskeletal remodelling and gain of migratory behaviour, driven by signals including TGF-beta, receptor tyrosine kinases, Wnt and the transcription factors Snail and Twist. He drew the parallel with gastrulation and neural crest migration in embryos and argued that EMT, and its reversal at secondary sites, could account for how metastases arise and why they often look epithelial again.","asOf":"2026-09-08","links":[{"label":"Full text (DOI)","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/nrc822"}],"tags":[],"related":["paper-kalluri-weinberg-emt-basics-jci-2009"],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":["emt","metastatic-cascade"],"terms":["metastasis","activating-invasion-metastasis"],"trials":[],"people":[],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":[],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"journal":"Nature Reviews Cancer","year":2002,"doi":"10.1038/nrc822","authors":"Thiery JP.","paperType":"review","findings":["Carcinoma progression involves loss of E-cadherin and epithelial polarity with gain of mesenchymal, migratory features.","The same signalling pathways and transcription factors drive EMT in embryos and in tumours.","Proposed EMT and its reversal as the basis of invasion and distant metastasis."],"whatItMeans":"This is the paper that made EMT a cancer concept, cited by almost every metastasis study since. It set the research agenda that later produced the EMT stem cell link and current work on partial EMT states.","caveats":["Largely based on cell culture and developmental analogies at the time.","Direct evidence for EMT in human metastasis has remained harder to obtain than the model predicts."],"changedPractice":false},"route":"/key-papers/paper-thiery-emt-tumour-progression-nrc-2002/","neighbours":{"paper":[{"id":"paper-kalluri-weinberg-emt-basics-jci-2009","kind":"paper","name":"Kalluri and Weinberg 2009: the basics of epithelial-mesenchymal transition","route":"/key-papers/paper-kalluri-weinberg-emt-basics-jci-2009/"},{"id":"paper-lamouille-emt-molecular-mechanisms-nrmcb-2014","kind":"paper","name":"Lamouille 2014: molecular mechanisms of epithelial-mesenchymal transition","route":"/key-papers/paper-lamouille-emt-molecular-mechanisms-nrmcb-2014/"}],"pathway":[{"id":"emt","kind":"pathway","name":"Epithelial-mesenchymal transition & drug efflux","route":"/pathways/emt/"},{"id":"metastatic-cascade","kind":"pathway","name":"The metastatic cascade","route":"/pathways/metastatic-cascade/"}],"term":[{"id":"activating-invasion-metastasis","kind":"term","name":"Hallmark: activating invasion and metastasis","route":"/terms/activating-invasion-metastasis/"},{"id":"metastasis","kind":"term","name":"Metastasis","route":"/terms/metastasis/"}]}}