Aim: To investigate the expression and clinical significance of FOXO4 in colorectal cancer tissues.
Methods: Immunohistochemistry assay was performed to detect the FOXO4 expression in 80 colorectal cancer and matched noncancerous tissues (18 cases in stage I, 32 in stage II, 24 in stage III and 6 in stage IV). The relationship between FOXO4 expression and the patients' clinicopathologic features including gender, differentiation and TNM staging was also analyzed.
Results: The positive expression rate of FOXO4 protein in colorectal cancer tissues was 47.50%, which was significantly lower than that in matched noncancerous tissues (91.25%, P<O. 01). Statistical analysis showed that the expression of FOXO4 in colorectal cancer tissues were not obviously correlated with the patients' age, gender , tumor sizes and depth( P >0.05) . however, there were significant differences of FOXO4 expression in tumor differentiation, TNM stage and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05).
Conclusion: The expression of FOXO4 was significantly decreased or deleted in colorectal cancer, indicating that FOXO4 may function as a tumor suppressor in the development and progression of colorectal cancer.