Snail maintains metastatic potential, cancer stem-like properties, and chemoresistance in mesenchymal mouse breast cancer TUBO‑P2J cells

Abstract Snail, a zinc-finger transcriptional repressor of E-cadherin expression, is one of the key inducers of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in epithelial cancer. In breast cancer, EMT has been associated with malignancies, including metastasis, cancer stem-like properties, and resistance to chemotherapy and radiotherapy. In this study, we analysed the role of Snail in the highly metastatic mesenchymal TUBO‑P2J mouse breast cancer cells, by loss of function using short hairpin RNA. Though silencing Snail did not restore the E-cadherin expression or induce morphological changes, Snail silencing significantly ablated in vitro and in vivo metastatic potentials. In addition, Snail silencing also reduced resistance to chemotherapy drugs and cancer stem-like properties, such as CD44 expression, aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH) activity, colony formation, and in vivo tumour formation and growth. However, radioresistance was not decreased by silencing Snail. Collectively, this study suggested that Snail is a main regulator of the maintenance of malignancy potentials and is a good target to prevent cancer metastasis and to increase chemotherapy susceptibility.