expression correlates with epithelial mesenchymal transition-linked genes and poor overall survival in colon cancer patients.

Background: Colon cancer is among the most commonly diagnosed cancers in the United States with an estimated 97220 new cases expected by the end of 2018. It affects 1.2 million people around the world and is responsible for about 0.6 million deaths every year. Despite decline in overall incidence and mortality over the past 30 years, there continues to be an alarming rise in early-onset colon cancer cases (< 50 years). Patients are often diagnosed at late stages of the disease and tend to have poor survival. We previously showed that the "gatekeeper" gene, secreted frizzled-related protein 4 (), is over-expressed in early-onset colon cancer. is speculated to play an essential role in cancer by inhibiting the epithelial mesenchymal transition (EMT).

Aim: To investigate the correlation between expression and EMT-linked genes in colon cancer and how it affects patient survival.

Methods: expression relative to that of EMT-linked genes and survival analysis were performed using the University of California Santa Cruz Cancer Browser interface.

Results: was found to be co-expressed with the EMT-linked markers , , , , , , , , , , , , , and . expression negatively correlated with the EMT-linked suppressors , , , , and . The expression of and the EMT-linked markers was higher in mesenchymal-like samples compared to epithelial-like samples which potentially implicates EMT mechanism in colon cancer. Additionally, patients overexpressing presented with poor overall survival ( = 0.0293).

Conclusion: Considering the implication of in early-onset colon cancer, particularly in the context of EMT, tumor metastasis, and invasion, and the effect of increased expression on colon cancer patient survival, might be a potential biomarker for early-onset colon cancer that could be targeted for diagnosis and/or disease therapy.