“…HGFR activation protects from apoptosis in several tumor in vitro models (Bowers et al, 2000;Fan et al, 2000Fan et al, , 2005Gao et al, 2001;Zeng et al, 2002;Derksen et al, 2003;Lal et al, 2005), and activation of b-catenin promotes the transcription of antiapoptotic genes (Dihlmann et al, 2005;Kim et al, 2005;Ma et al, 2005) and was associated with increased tumor cell survival in CRC (Ireland et al, 2004;Ougolkov et al, 2004). However, a proapoptotic role of HGF (Arakaki et al, 1998;Matteucci et al, 2003;Rasola et al, 2004) and b-catenin (Kim et al, 2000;van Gijn et al, 2001;Edlund et al, 2005) was also reported in several models.…”