Abstract
Clinicopathologic staging of colorectal cancels cannot always predict aggressiveness or prognosis for a particular patient. We have used activity assays for cysteine proteinases, cathepsins B, L and H (CB, CL and CH) and matrix metalloproteinases, MMP-2 and MMP-9, to identify several, distinctive, reproducible proteolytic profiles in a large set of colorectal carcinomas. We observed that individual proteinases demonstrated specific and distinct levels of activity at different cancer stages, possibly reflecting non-random steps in a proteolytic cascade related to tumor development. We also observed that individual colon cancers fell into relatively few categories when characterized for the combined expression of three proteinases: CB, CL and MMP-9. Four proteolytic profiles, designated 'Early', 'Middle', 'Late', and 'High', could be used to define almost 80% of the colectal carcinomas analyzed. Such profiles, based on the expression of several proteinases in a given tumor, provided information independent of clinical stage and may identify crucial variations in tumor behavior.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 209-216 |
| Number of pages | 8 |
| Journal | In vivo (Athens, Greece) |
| Volume | 11 |
| Issue number | 3 |
| Publication status | Published - May 1997 |
| Externally published | Yes |
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Keywords
- Cathepsins
- Colorectal cancer
- Matrix metalloproteinases
- Proteinases
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Medicine(all)