ELN and neoplasm: To further investigate the role of ELN in the regulation of tumor development in CRC, we measured EMT markers alpha smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) and vimentin (VIM) [31] in human colon cancer epithelial cells cultured on plates collated with (or without) ELN recombinant protein and with (or without) media containing ELN peptide for 48 h by immunoblot (Fig. 5a, Additional file 1: Fig. S4).