Hypoxia-inducible adrenomedullin in colorectal cancer.

BACKGROUND

Recently, we determined several potential prognostic factors in vivo using hypoxic tumor cells from hepatic metastases of colorectal cancer (CRC). Among them, expression of adrenomedullin (ADM) was an interesting target because it is highly induced by hypoxia.

PATIENTS AND METHODS

To evaluate the prognostic impact of the expression of ADM, samples from a total of 373 CRC patients were analyzed by microarray (n = 222), and quantitative reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (n = 151).

RESULTS

ADM was a novel independent prognostic factor for CRC (p = 0.027). ADM expression correlated with hypoxia-inducible factor-1 A (p < 0.0001) and vascular endothelial growth factor (p < 0.0001) in vivo.

CONCLUSION

ADM expression is a useful marker for predicting high risk of relapse and cancer-related death in patients who have undergone curative resection for CRC.