Recently we reported that cancer cell-fibroblast interactions can modulate the expression of fibronectin (FN) isoforms in vitro, i.e. conditioned medium of human rectal adenocarcinoma cell line RCM-1 (RCM-1 CM) stimulated the expression of EDA-containing FN (EDA(+)FN) mRNA by fibroblasts and this stimulation was partly mediated by transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) included in RCM-1 CM.
All the tissues investigated produced EDA+, EDA-, EDB+ and EDB- splice variants, and this study did not support RT-PCR-based detection of either EDA or EDB domains as markers of malignancy in oral tissues.