Background: Colorectal cancer remains the second leading cause of death in the United States despite improvements in incidence rates and advancements in screening. The present study evaluated the prognostic value of two tumor markers, MET and ROCK I, which have been noted in other cancers to provide more accurate prognoses of patient outcomes than tumor staging alone.
Materials and methods: We constructed a tissue microarray from surgical specimens of adenocarcinomas from 108 colorectal cancer patients. Using immunohistochemistry, we examined the expression levels of tumor markers MET and ROCK I, with a pathologist blinded to patient identities and clinical outcomes providing the scoring of MET and ROCK I expression. We then used retrospective analysis of patients' survival data to provide correlations with expression levels of MET and ROCK I.
Results: Both MET and ROCK I were significantly over-expressed in colorectal cancer tissues, relative to the unaffected adjacent mucosa. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that patients' 5-year survival was inversely correlated with levels of expression of ROCK I. In contrast, MET was less strongly correlated with five-year survival.
Conclusion: ROCK I provides better efficacy in predicting patient outcomes, compared to either tumor staging or MET expression. As a result, ROCK I may provide a less invasive method of assessing patient prognoses and directing therapeutic interventions.
Keywords: Colorectal cancer; MET; ROCK I; five-year survival; immunohistochemistry; tissue microarray.
Copyright© 2015 International Institute of Anticancer Research (Dr. John G. Delinassios), All rights reserved.