Subculturing procedure

Cells were harvested using standard trypsinization procedure and counted using trypan blue and Countess device (Invitrogen, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA). For cell proliferation experiments the serial dilution of cells in complete growth medium was performed before adding to E-plate. Cells for migration experiments were resuspended in serum-free medium, counted and seeded at the following density for the HEC-1-B and the Ishikawa cell lines 100,000 cells/well and 50,000cells/well for KLE cell line 100,000 cells/well, 50,000cells/well and 20,000 cells/well in a CIM plate.