EPCAM and cancer: Moreover, it has been suggested that the functional role of EpCAM in adhesion does not conform to the characteristics of traditional homophilic adhesion molecules, as regulation of EpCAM through intracellular proteolysis and its knockdown has shown little measurable impact on cell-matrix and cell-cell adhesion in cancer cell lines (Tsaktanis et al., 2016; Gaber et al., 2020).