Hindawi Mediators of Inflammation Volume 2021, Article ID 6655417, 23 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2021/6655417 Review Article Unraveling the Molecular Nexus between GPCRs, ERS, and EMT Niti Kumari,1 Somrudee Reabroi ,1,2 and Brian J. North 1 1Biomedical Sciences Department, Creighton University School of Medicine, Omaha, NE 68178, USA 2Department of Pharmacology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand Correspondence should be addressed to Brian J. North;
[email protected] Received 26 December 2020; Revised 23 February 2021; Accepted 25 February 2021; Published 2 March 2021 Academic Editor: Rohit Gundamaraju Copyright © 2021 Niti Kumari et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) represent a large family of transmembrane proteins that transduce an external stimulus into a variety of cellular responses. They play a critical role in various pathological conditions in humans, including cancer, by regulating a number of key processes involved in tumor formation and progression. The epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a fundamental process in promoting cancer cell invasion and tumor dissemination leading to metastasis, an often intractable state of the disease. Uncontrolled proliferation and persistent metabolism of cancer cells also induce oxidative stress, hypoxia, and depletion of growth factors and nutrients. These disturbances lead to the accumulation of misfolded proteins in the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) and induce a cellular condition called ER stress (ERS) which is counteracted by activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR).