HOPX and nasopharyngeal carcinoma: Notably, when the expression of HOPX was knocked down in N2-Tert, NP69 and SH cells, we found that the morphology of some cells transitioned from an epithelial-like form to a spindle-shaped or elongated, mesenchymal form (Fig. 4a and Supplementary Fig. 6a), which indicated that HOPX functioned to maintain the epithelial status of NPEC and NPC cells.