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©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Exp Med. Dec 20, 2025; 15(4): 110372
Published online Dec 20, 2025. doi: 10.5493/wjem.v15.i4.110372
Published online Dec 20, 2025. doi: 10.5493/wjem.v15.i4.110372
Immunohistochemical expression of epithelial mesenchymal transition proteins ZEB1 and E-cadherin in oral leukoplakia and oral squamous cell carcinoma
Gouri S Panchannavar, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, DAPM R V Dental College, Bengaluru, Bengaluru 560078, Karnataka, India
Punnya V Angadi, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, KLE VK Institute of Dental Sciences, KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research, Belagavi 580010, Karnataka, India
Author contributions: Panchannavar GS carried out the work of method validation, investigation, resource collection and draft; Angadi PV was responsible for the conception, research, validation, writing and review, supervision and project management of the project; Panchannavar GS and Angadi PV carried out the analysis; and all authors thoroughly reviewed and endorsed the final manuscript.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Karanataka Lingayat Education, Vishwanath Katti, Institute of Dental Sceinecs, approval No. 1321.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors report no relevant conflicts of interest for this article.
Data sharing statement: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Punnya V Angadi, MDS, DNB, PhD Deputy Director, Full Professor, Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, KLE VK Institute of Dental Sciences, KLE Academy of Higher Education and Research, JNMC Campus, Nehrunagar, Belagavi 580010, Karnataka, India. punnya_angadi@rediffmail.com
Received: June 6, 2025
Revised: June 21, 2025
Accepted: September 5, 2025
Published online: December 20, 2025
Processing time: 197 Days and 17.2 Hours
Revised: June 21, 2025
Accepted: September 5, 2025
Published online: December 20, 2025
Processing time: 197 Days and 17.2 Hours
Core Tip
Core Tip: The study demonstrates the presence of the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) phenomenon in oral premalignant and malignant lesions suggesting it to be an early change in carcinogenesis. The loss of E-cadherin and up-regulation of zinc-finger E-box-binding homeobox 1 from oral epithelial dysplasia to oral squamous cell carcinoma cor