{"paper_id":"eb211c4a-7bbb-47c6-8fc0-ef807bce9dde","body_text":"Abstract\nEndometriosis, a common gynecological disease, leads to dysmenorrhea and infertility. EMT process was closely related to the pathology of endometriosis. More therapies were required to be explored for endometriosis management. The current study was intended to explore the effect of honokiol in endometriosis. Endometriosis endometrial stromal cells (EESCs) were isolated from endometriosis patients for in vitro analysis. Rats were autotransplanted with endometrial tissues for in vivo study. A range of experiments including MTT, wound healing, Transwell, western blot, hematoxylin and eosin staining, immunohistochemical staining, and RIA analysis were carried out to determine the function and mechanism of honokiol in vitro and in vivo. For in vitro analysis, low dose of honokiol treatment induced no cytotoxicity to EESCs. Honokiol treatment suppressed cell migration and invasion of EESCs. Additionally, honokiol inhibited EMT process of EESCs. For in vivo analysis, honokiol treatment significantly improved pathological morphology in endometriosis model rats. Besides, honokiol treatment decreased Ki67 but increased cleaved caspase-3 protein in ectopic endometrium tissues. Moreover, honokiol administration decreased wet weight of ectopic endometrium tissues, E2 and PGE2 levels. Similarly, honokiol also attenuated EMT process in ectopic endometrium tissues. 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Curr Issues Mol Biol 43(2):900–916\nAcknowledgements\nWe appreciate the support of the First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine.\nFunding\nHunan Natural Science Foundation Project (No. 2025JJ80931). Joint Fund of Hunan University of Traditional Chinese Medicine (No. 2024XYLH350). Scientific Research Fund of the Health Commission of Hunan Province (No. 20254619).\nAuthor information\nAuthors and Affiliations\nContributions\nXiaojuan Kong conceived and designed the experiments. Xiaojuan Kong and Lei Lei carried out the experiments.Xiaojuan Kong and Lei Lei analyzed the data. Xiaojuan Kong and Lei Lei drafted the manuscript. All authors agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript. The authors declare that all data were generated in-house and that no paper mill was used.\nCorresponding author\nEthics declarations\nEthics approval and consent to participate\nAll participants provided informed consent. The study complied with the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Ethics Committee of the First Hospital of Hunan University of Chinese Medicine.\nConsent for publication\nNot applicable.\nCompeting interests\nThe authors declare no competing interests.\nClinical trial number\nNot applicable.\nAdditional information\nPublisher's Note\nSpringer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.\nSupplementary Information\nBelow is the link to the electronic supplementary material.\nESM 1 (download PPTX )\n(PPTX 2.14 MB)\nRights and permissions\nSpringer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.\nAbout this article\nCite this article\nKong, X., Lei, L. Honokiol inhibits cell migration and invasion by blocking EMT via Snail/Slug axis in endometriosis. Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Arch Pharmacol 399, 4507–4517 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-025-04702-x\nReceived:\nAccepted:\nPublished:\nVersion of record:\nIssue date:\nDOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00210-025-04702-x","source_license":"public-domain-us","license_restricted":false}