SNAI1 and cancer: During cancer development, the HMGA2 protein participates in the EMT process, leading cancer cells to migrate and invade by increasing the expression of mesenchymal markers such as vimentin, Snail1, and Twist and reducing the expression of epithelial markers such as E-cadherin and Occludin (Li et al. 1997; Shi et al. 2016), as well as stimulating extracellular matrix degeneration to facilitate cancer cell migration and invasion through increasing the expression of MMP2 and MMP9 (Yan et al. 2021).