VIM and hepatocellular carcinoma: We also demonstrated that the observed enhanced migration, invasion and colony formation potentials in the PDK1-rich Hep3B-R, Mahlavu-R and Huh7-R cells were concomitantly associated with marked up-regulation of p-PDK1, PDK1, N-cadherin, Vimentin and Snail protein expression levels, with converse down-regulation of E-cadherin, compared to their expression in the HCC-WT cells (Figure 4D).