p53 expression status is associated with cancer-specific survival in stage III and high-risk stage II colorectal cancer patients treated with oxaliplatin-based adjuvant chemotherapy.

Background: We attempted to elucidate whether p53 expression or TP53 mutation status was associated with cancer-specific survival in adjuvant FOLFOX-treated patients with stage III or high-risk stage II colorectal cancer (CRC).

Methods: We analysed CRCs (N = 621) for the presence of TP53 alterations and for p53 expression, using targeted resequencing and immunohistochemistry. CRCs were grouped into four subsets according to the p53 expression status, which included p53-no, mild, moderate and strong expression.