High expression of is associated with EMAST and poor prognosis in CRC patients.

AIM

This study aimed to determine the link between Snail1 expression and CRC patients' survival as well as its significant association with EMAST status.

BACKGROUND

is an evolutionary preserved zinc-finger transcription protein which contributes to Epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). EMT initiates invasion and proliferation in many tumors. Elevated microsatellite alteration at selected tetranucleotide repeats (EMAST) is a marker of poor prognosis in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC). We hypothesized that overexpression is an important mediator of metastasis and decreased survival in CRCs that characteristically have EMAST phenotype.

METHODS

Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reactions were carried out to analyze the expression levels of Snail1 in both normal and tumor specimens from a total of 122 paraffin-embedded tissues (FFPE) of CRC sample with known EMAST status. The correlation between Snail1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics, survival, and EMAST status were examined.

RESULTS

Snail1 overexpression was detected in tumor tissues in 32% of all examined patients and its positive expression was related to metastasis (p=0.001) and EMAST+ phenotype (P=0.017). Further, positive Snail1 expression correlates with poor overall survival in CRC patients (P=0.01).

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that overexpression is not only associated with EMAST but also with clinicopathological variables of poor prognosis. These results indicate that Snail1 expression levels may be useful for establishing novel therapeutic strategies and could help survival improvement in CRC patients.