News Release

A novel marker of colorectal carcinoma

Peer-Reviewed Publication

World Journal of Gastroenterology

The colorectal cancer is thought to be resulted from a combination of environmental factors, diet, lifestyle, chronic inflammation and accumulation of specific genetic alterations. The pathogenesis and development of colorectal cancer involve multi-genes and multi-steps. TSPAN1 (GenBank Accession No. AF065388) is a new member of TM4SF located at chromosome 1 p34.1. It encodes a 241 amino acid protein. TSPAN1 was reported as a tumor-related gene recently.

A research team led by Dr Jian-Wei Zhu from Nantong University, China, investigated the association between TSPAN1 and human colorectal adenocarcinoma. Their study will be published on May 14, 2009 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology

In this study, total RNA was extracted in 20 human adenocarcinoma tissues for TSPAN1 mRNA assay by RT-PCR. Eighty-eight specimens of human colorectal adenocarcinoma were surgically removed. TSPAN1 protein levels in cancer tissues were determined by immunohistochemistry using a polyclonal antibody against self-prepared TSPAN1. The correlation between TSPAN1 expression and the clinicopathological factors and the overall survival rate was analyzed by univariate and multivariate assay.

By RT-PCR assay, it was shown that TSPAN1 mRNA was detected in 90.0% (18/20) of cancerous tissue. The light density of TSPAN1 mRNA expression levels was 0.89 ±0.30 in adenocarcinoma by gel-image system. TSPAN1 protein expression was detected in 78.41 %( 69/88) and weakly expressed in 40% normal colorectal tissues by immunohistochemistry. There were significant differences between colorectal adenocarcinoma and normal control epithelium (P < 0.05). TSPAN1 protein expression in colorectal cancerous tissue was significantly correlated with the histological grade, cell expression PCNA, lymph nodal metastasis and TNM staging of the disease. Patients with TSPAN1 protein over expression had a significantly shorter survival period than that in patients with TSPAN1 protein negative or weak expression, respectively (P<0.05). Furthermore, by multivariate analysis TSPAN1 protein expression demonstrated an independent prognostic factor for human colorectal cancers (P<0.05, relative risk 0.755; 95% confidence interval 0.302-1.208).

The result indicated that testing TSPAN1 expression in tissues would be a useful tool to evaluate the prognosis of patients with colorectal cancer.

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Reference: Chen L, Zhu YY, Zhang XJ, Wang GL, Li XY, He S, Zhang JB, Zhu JW. TSPAN1 protein expression: A significant prognostic indicator for patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma. World J Gastroenterol 2009; 15(18): 2270-2276 http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/15/2270.asp

Correspondence to: Jian-Wei Zhu, Department of General Surgery, Affiliated Hospital, 20 Xi Si Road, Nantong University, Nantong 226001, Jiangsu Province, China. usazhujianwei@yahoo.com.cn

About World Journal of Gastroenterology

World Journal of Gastroenterology (WJG), a leading international journal in gastroenterology and hepatology, has established a reputation for publishing first class research on esophageal cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, viral hepatitis, colorectal cancer, and H. pylori infection and provides a forum for both clinicians and scientists. WJG has been indexed and abstracted in Current Contents/Clinical Medicine, Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch) and Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, Index Medicus, MEDLINE and PubMed, Chemical Abstracts, EMBASE/Excerpta Medica, Abstracts Journals, Nature Clinical Practice Gastroenterology and Hepatology, CAB Abstracts and Global Health. ISI JCR 2003-2000 IF: 3.318, 2.532, 1.445 and 0.993. WJG is a weekly journal published by WJG Press. The publication dates are the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th day of every month. WJG is supported by The National Natural Science Foundation of China, No. 30224801 and No. 30424812, and was founded with the name of China National Journal of New Gastroenterology on October 1, 1995, and renamed WJG on January 25, 1998.

About The WJG Press

The WJG Press mainly publishes World Journal of Gastroenterology.


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