Aberrant expression of human ortholog of mammalian enabled (hMena) in human colorectal carcinomas: implications for its role in tumor progression.

The human ortholog of mammalian enabled (hMena), a family of enabled/vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein (Ena/VASP), is an actin regulatory protein involved in the regulation of cell motility. Increasing evidence suggests that hMena over-expression is involved in human breast cancers, whereas the significance of hMena expression in colorectal carcinomas remains to be elucidated. In this study, we assessed the relative mRNA level of hMena using real-time PCR, showing that there is a statistically significant increase of hMena transcripts in matched human colorectal carcinomas and adjacent non-neoplastic colorectal epithelium (n=6, P=0.