MMP7 and neoplasm: To further explore the role of Wnt-signaling pathway in regulating the EMT process induced by H. parasuis, we evaluated the function of three Wnt target genes, MMP7, COX2 and PAI-1, which have been proved to be associated with cell structural change and the process of EMT in some tumor cells (Neil et al., 2008; Omori et al., 2016; Zhang et al., 2017).