Tudor-SN protein expression in colorectal cancer and its association with clinical characteristics

Abstract

Tudor-SN protein (SND1) is known to be up-regulated in some types of human malignancies and functions as an oncogene. The objective of our study was to investigate the expression and prognostic value of SND1 in human colorectal cancer (CRC). Real-Time PCR and western blot were performed to examine the SND1 expression in human CRC and their corresponding non-cancerous colon tissues from 42 patients. Its clinical significance was evaluated by analyzing its expression with multiple pathological characters of CRC patients. Finally, a Kaplan-Meier survival curve was derived for SND1 gene expression among these CRC patients. We found a significantly increased expression of SND1 mRNA and protein in tissue samples of CRC when compared to those in the paired normal adjacent colon tissues. High SND1 expression was positively correlated with higher tumor grades, aggressive N1+N2 nodal status and poor differentiation. Additionally, the overall survival rate in CRC patients with higher expression of SND1 was significantly shorter than that with lower SND1 expression. Our findings suggested that SND1 might act as an important agent in the CRC carcinogenesis and predicted worse outcomes. The high expression of SND1 could be used as a novel predictive and prognostic marker of CRC.