Figure 7

Blockage of β-catenin and Akt pathways suppresses CD44 expression. (a) The expression of β-catenin was knocked down or cells were treated with wortmannin as described in the Materials and Methods. The luciferase activity of CD44 was measured by using a Dual-Luciferase Reporter Assay (Promega) (mean ± SD of three separate experiments). (b) A proposed model to illustrate how Twist activates β-catenin and Akt pathways to maintain the expression of CD44 and stem cell-like properties associated with EMT.