CXCL12 and ovarian carcinoma: Mesenchymal morphological changes of ovarian cancer cells such as changes of cell shape from cobblestone (epithelial) to spindle-like narrow elongated shape (mesenchymal) have been implicated as a marker of EMT and has been reported to be induced in ovarian cancer by treatment with cytokines such as TGF-β [44,51,58,62,70,75], TNF-α [51], and chemokine CXCL12 and its receptor CXCR4 [52,53].