Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 22, 2026
Colorectal Cancer Cell Surface Protein Profiling Using an Antibody Microarray and Fluorescence Multiplexing
Published on: September 25, 2011
Prognostic Correlation Between MFG-E8 Expression Level and Colorectal Cancer
Min Jia1, Huaning Yao2, Chao Chen1
1Laboratory of Clinical Immunology, Wuhan No.1 Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Wuhan, Hubei, PR China.
Background And Aims:
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death all over the world. Milk fat globule-epidermal growth factor (EGF)-factor VIII (MFG-E8) was found to be highly expressed in a variety of cancers. However its role in CRC is unclear. This study investigates the expression of MFG-E8 in CRC tissues and the correlation with clinicopathological features and prognosis in CRC patients.
Methods:
The expression of MFG-E8 proteins was detected by immunohistochemical staining in 90 samples of CRC. The localization of MFG-E8 in colorectal tumor was examined by immunofluorescence staining. The correlation between MFG-E8 protein expression and the clinical pathological features of CRC were evaluated by χ2 test and Fisher's exact test. The survival rates were analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method, and the relationship between prognostic factors and patient survival was analyzed by the Cox proportional hazard models.
Results:
Our results showed that MFG-E8 expression increased significantly in colorectal cancer compared with normal mucosa tissues (p <0.001). We further validated MFG-E8 overexpression in 6 pairs of fresh tumor and adjacent normal mucosa tissues from colorectal cancer patients by Western blot (p <0.05). Immunofluorescence staining showed that MFG-E8 accumulated in close proximity to endothelial cells in human colorectal tumor tissue. In addition, high MFG-E8 protein expression was correlated with lymph node metastasis and some pathological classifications (p <0.05). Furthermore, patients with high protein level of MFG-E8 showed shortened overall survivals (p <0.05).
Conclusion:
Our results showed that MFG-E8 could be a potential novel prognostic marker for CRC and overexpression of MFG-E8 might be involved in lymph node metastasis and angiogenesis of CRC.
