VIM and cancer: Therefore, we analyzed markers of epithelial-mesenchymal-transition (EMT), which is one of the mechanisms that drive cancer metastasis, and we found that overexpression of PPFIA4 upregulated mesenchymal markers, including vimentin, SNAI1, ZEB1 and TWIST1 and downregulated the epithelial marker CDH1 in SW403 cells (Figure 3E).