Immunoblotting was conducted using protocols from our previous studies (Gao et al. 2015 (link); Liu and Gao 2020 (link); Liu et al. 2021 (link)). Multi-lane blots were used to confirm the protein changes in animal tissues as observed in 2D-DIGE and probe for the protein changes in NNK transformed BEAS-2B cells. In addition, traditional Western blot was used to measure the protein changes of interest. Calregulin (sc-166837), ezrin (sc-398542), E-cadherin (sc-52328), HRF (sc-133131), and PPA1 (sc-377081) primary antibodies and anti-mouse secondary antibodies were purchased from Santa Cruz Biotechnology (Dallas, TX). Vimentin (5741) primary and anti-rabbit (7074) secondary antibodies were purchased from Cell Signaling Technology (Danvers, MA).