High expression of nucleophosmin is closely related to the grade and invasion of colorectal cancer

Abstract

This study explores the differential protein expression in the colorectal cancer (CRC) patients to validate a new biomarker for tumor progression. CRC tissues and their adjacent non-cancerous tissues were analyzed by two-dimensional LC/MS/MS. Nucleophosmin 1 (NPM1) was selected and confirmed its differential expression by Western blot. Immunohistological staining of NPM1 in tissues was performed to validate its correlation with clinicopathologic parameters of CRC patients. There were 39 candidates with significant difference between cancerous tissues and their adjacent non-cancerous tissues, which included 19 increased proteins and 20 decreased proteins in CRC samples. Especially, NPM1 was correlated with poor differentiation, and lymph node metastasis according to the analysis of patients’ clinicopathologic parameters. Increased expression of NPM1 can be as a critical biomarker for clinical diagnosis of tumor progression of CRC patients.