When a person learns they are suffering from cancer, the first question in their mind is always: "How much time do I have?" Unfortunately, this is a question to which the researchers have long been seeking an absolute answer.
Tumor progression to local invasion and metastasis are the most relevant processes for prognosis, and predictive factors for survival are sometimes the only hope for cancer patients. Tumor suppressors and adhesion molecules represent one of the primary challenges in cancer therapy.
NCAM is an embryologic adhesion molecule suggested to be a significant factor for survival in patients with various solid tumors. A correlation between reduced NCAM expression and poor prognosis has been reported for some cancer types. The existence of NCAM-180 has been proposed to function as a tumor suppressor in colon carcinoma. However, no prospective research has yet been conducted to evaluate the prognostic value and the frequency of NCAM-180 in colorectal cancer. Yet cancer patients and their families obviously want to know if they can recover from this miserable disease or what they may experience during its clinical course.
A research article published on November 7 in the World Journal of Gastroenterology addresses this question. The research team, led by Dr. Tascilar from Zonguldak Karaelmas University, investigated the frequency of NCAM-180 expression and the effect of its existence on clinical course in 26 patients suffering from colorectal cancer over a period of 4 years.
One conclusion reported by the investigators is that NCAM-180 expression was determined in only one patient with stage II cancer, with an uneventful clinical course during a follow-up period of 30 months. However, the overall rate was only 3.84%, and statistical correlation analysis of survival with NCAM-180 expression was not possible due to this low frequency.