SOX2 expression correlates with lymph-node metastases and distant spread in right-sided colon cancer

BMC Cancer

Research Article

Markus Gerhard¹  Raquel Mejías-Luque¹  Jens Neumann²  Fiorina Bahr²  Lydia Kriegl²  Thomas Kirchner²  Andreas Jung²  David Horst³  Jutta Engel⁴ 

[1] Institut für Medizinische Mikrobiologie und Immunologie, Technische Universität München, Munich, Germany;Pathologisches Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany;Pathologisches Institut, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany;Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA;Tumorregister München des Tumorzentrums München am Institut für medizinische Informationsverarbeitung, Biometrie und Epidemiologie der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany;

关键词: SOX2;    β-catenin;    Colon cancer;    Metastasis;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1471-2407-11-518

 received in 2011-07-08, accepted in 2011-12-14,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe transcription factor SOX2, which is involved in the induction of pluripotent stem cells and contributes to colorectal carcinogenesis, is associated with a poor prognosis in colon cancer (CC). Furthermore, SOX2 is a repressor of the transcriptional activity of β-catenin in vitro. Since the majority of CC develop via an activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signalling pathway, indicated by nuclear expression of β-catenin, we wanted to investigate the expression patterns of SOX2 and β-catenin and correlate them with the occurrence of lymph node and distant metastases as indicators of malignant progression.MethodsThe expression of SOX2 and β-catenin was investigated in a case control study utilizing a matched pair collection (N = 114) of right-sided CCs with either corresponding distant metastases (N = 57) or without distant spread (N = 57) by applying immunohistochemistry.ResultsElevated protein expression of SOX2 significantly correlated with the presence of lymph node- (p = 0.006) and distant metastases (p = 0.022). Nuclear β-catenin expression correlated significantly only with distant metastases (p = 0.001). Less than 10% of cases showed a coexpression of high levels of β-catenin and SOX2. The positivity for both markers was also associated with a very high risk for lymph-node metastases (p = 0.007) and distant spread (p = 0.028).ConclusionWe demonstrated that increased expression of either SOX2 or nuclear β-catenin are associated with distant metastases in right-sided CC. Additionally, SOX2 is also associated with lymph-node metastases. These data underline the importance of stemness-associated markers for the identification of CC with high risk for distant spread.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Neumann et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011