TWIST1 and cancer: EMT is a critical step in the cascade of events leading to cancer metastasis, which contributes to the majority of cancer-associated deaths, and is regulated by a set of transcription factors that include snail family transcriptional repressor 1 (Snail), snail family transcriptional repressor 2 (Slug), zinc finger E-box binding homeobox 1 (ZEB1), and wist family bHLH transcription factor 1 (Twist) [23].