Research Progress of the Role of EMT in EGFR-TKIs Resistance ？of Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Lung cancer is the one of the malignant tumor of the highest morbidity and mortality over the world, and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) makes up about 80%. Nowadays, molecular targeted therapy has been the first-line treatment for NSCLC. Epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) are increasingly used in the clinical treatment, but the EGFR-TKIs acquired resistance becomes the bottleneck of continuation of EGFR-TKIs therapy. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a biological phenomenon in which epithelial cells are transformed into mesenchymal cells. EMT promoted metastasis, invasion of lung cancer and conferred characteristic of stem cell on cancer cells. Meanwhile, EMT is one of an important cause of EGFR-TKIs resistance in NSCLC. The recent studies have found that resistant cells restored the sensitivity to EGFR-TKIs by reversing EMT which suggested that the target of EMT may contribute to inhibit or even reverse the resistance of EGFR-TKIs. Here we make a review about research progress of EMT in EGFR-TKIs resistance in NSCLC.？