Background/aims: The phosphatase of regenerating liver-3 (PRL-3) is over expressed in several human cancers and associated with tumor progression, invasion and metastasis. However, the correlation between PRL-3 expression and clinical outcome in colorectal cancer (CRC) has not been investigated. This study examined the relationship between the relative expression of the PRL-3 gene to the clinicopathological factors and outcomes in patients with CRC.
Methodology: Surgical specimens of cancer tissue and adjacent normal mucosa were obtained from 202 patients with untreated CRC. The relative expression level of PRL-3 mRNA in cancer and in the normal adjacent mucosa was measured using the quantitative real-time reverse-transcriptase PCR.
Results: PRL-3 expression was higher in cancer tissue than in the adjacent normal mucosa. The tumor location and liver metastasis were found to be related to the PRL-3 expression level. The overall survival differed significantly between patients with high PRL-3 expression and those with low expression.
Conclusions: High expression of the PRL-3 gene might be a useful predictor of poor postoperative outcome in patients with CRC.