FANCD2 mRNA overexpression is a bona fide indicator of lymph node metastasis in human colorectal cancer.

Abstract

Lymph node metastasis is widely accepted as one of the most important determinants of prognosis in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify molecular markers that can be used to predict lymph node metastasis. Candidate genes were found using LMD and cDNA microarrays in a large-scale study of CRC, followed by Penalized Canonical Correlation Analysis (PCCA). We focused on the Fanconi anemia, complementation group D2 (FANCD2) gene and evaluated FANCD2 mRNA expression in 133 CRC cases to determine the clinicopathological significance of FANCD2 expression. The mean level of FANCD2 mRNA expression in tumor tissue specimens was significantly higher than in nontumor tissue. FANCD2 expression was found to be a significant factor affecting lymph node metastasis: the high FANCD2 expression group had a significantly poorer prognosis than the low expression group. This study suggests that PCCA can be used to identify genes related to clinicopathological features. Furthermore, high FANCD2 expression was a significant independent factor for lymph node metastasis.