MMP2 and tongue cancer: In tongue cancer (Tca-8113, SCC-25 cell lines), Dai et al. (2016) reported that carvacrol effectively inhibited cell proliferation through the negative regulation of CCND1 and CDK4 expression, and the positive regulation of p21 expression, resulting in a significant decrease of cells in the S phase, in addition to inhibiting the migration and invasion abilities of Tca-8113 cells via phospho-focal adhesion kinase (p-FAK), p-catenin, ZEB1 and MMP-2 and -9 reduction.