The goal was to evaluate the early, initial effects of these drugs on key drivers of EMT in breast cancer that could explain the ability of eribulin to reverse EMT in patients and preclinical models.19,20 The experimental design utilised a 2 h pre-treatment of cells with microtubule targeting agents at concentrations that are clinically relevant and that cause maximal microtubule disruption.8 A 2 ng/mL concentration of TGF-β was sufficient to induce robust Snail protein (Fig. 1a) and SNAI1 transcript expression (Fig. 1b and Supplementary Fig. S1a, b) within 2–3 h in serum-starved TNBC cells. Here, SNAI1 is linked to breast carcinoma.