Because EMT initiation is a critical process in tumour progression (Acloque et al., 2009), we evaluated the effect of BEST4 on EMT using quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and found that BEST4 expression upregulated CDH1 and TJP1 and downregulated VIM and TWIST1 in HCT116 compared with the control (p<0.05) (Figure 2A). The gene discussed is TWIST1; the disease is neoplasm.