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Progastrin: a potential predictive marker of liver metastasis in colorectal cancer

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International Journal of Colorectal Disease Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background and aims

Staging of colorectal cancer often fails to discriminate outcomes of patients with morphologically similar tumours that exhibit different clinical behaviours. Data from several studies suggest that the gastrin family of growth factors potentiates colorectal cancer tumourigenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate whether progastrin expression may predict clinical outcome in colorectal cancer.

Methods

Patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma of identical depth of invasion who had not received neoadjuvant therapy were included. The patients either had stage IIa disease with greater than 3-year disease-free survival without adjuvant therapy or stage IV disease with liver metastases on staging CT. Progastrin expression in tumour sections was scored with reference to the intensity and area of immunohistochemical staining.

Results

Progastrin expression by stage IV tumours was significantly greater than stage IIa tumours with mean progastrin immunopositivity scores of 2.1 ± 0.2 versus 0.5 ± 0.2, respectively (P < 0.001).

Conclusions

This is the first study to show that progastrin expression may be predictive of aggressive tumour behaviour in patients with colorectal cancer and supports its clinical relevance and potential use as a biomarker.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Melbourne Department of Surgery, Austin Health, Heidelberg, Victoria, Australia

    David A Westwood, Oneel Patel, Christopher Christophi, Arthur Shulkes & Graham S Baldwin

Authors
  1. David A Westwood
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  2. Oneel Patel
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  3. Christopher Christophi
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  4. Arthur Shulkes
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  5. Graham S Baldwin
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Contributions

David Westwood—study design; acquisition and analysis of data; drafting of the manuscript. Oneel Patel—critical revision of the manuscript. Christopher Christophi—study supervision. Arthur Shulkes—study supervision. Graham Baldwin—critical revision of the manuscript; obtained funding; administrative support; study supervision.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David A Westwood.

Ethics declarations

Approval was obtained from the Austin Health Human Research Ethics Committee (H2011-04458).

Financial support

This work was supported in part by grants from the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (454322, 1020983, 1062173) and by the award of a Foundation for Surgery Research Scholarship from the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Westwood, D.A., Patel, O., Christophi, C. et al. Progastrin: a potential predictive marker of liver metastasis in colorectal cancer. Int J Colorectal Dis 32, 1061–1064 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00384-017-2822-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00384-017-2822-8

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