ILK and malignant colon neoplasm: The overexpression of ILK has previously been shown to increase fibronectin ECM deposition in rat IECs (Wu et al., 1998) and the intestine-specific knockout of ILK in mice, as well as the siRNA knockdown of ILK in SW480 colon cancer cells, were recently shown to result in the decrease of fibronectin mRNA and protein expression levels (Assi et al., 2008).