ZFP36 and cancer: Persistent infection of oral epithelial cells by P. gingivalis downregulates ZFP36 protein expression and upregulates CCAT1 (colon cancer-associated transcript-1, also known as cancer-associated regional long-stranded non-coding RNA-5) expression, which enhances cancer-associated biological behaviors in human oral epithelial cells (as shown in Figure 2) (Lu et al., 2024).