Investigating Association between Membrane-Bound Mucin (MUC12) Expression Level and Clinicopathological Characterization of Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most prevalent canceres throughout the world and has a high mortality rate. It is accepted that dysfunction in the expression of mucins is associated with the occurrence and development of CRC. Given that, the purpose of the current study was to analyze the expression of the MUC12 gene in CRC and its relationship with clinicopathological variables.

This research was a prospective case-control study. Tumors from CRC patients were collected from the Taleghani Hospital, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. RNA extraction and cDNA synthesis were performed using the corresponding kits. The gene primer was designed and RT-PCR was used to evaluate gene expression. ANOVA analysis and the t-test were employed to examine the differences between the different groups. Prism8 software was also used for data analysis.

The results of the present study showed that the expression of MUC12 (P=0.0012) gene in patients with CRC was significantly different from tumor margin samples. Associations between the expression of the studied gene and clinicopathological variables such as grade and stage of CRC tumor as well as the age of the patients were also observed. The area under the curves (AUC) for the MUC12 0.953 was calculated by ROC analysis.

It can be stated that malignant transformation of colorectal cells is accompanied by changes in the expression of MUC12 in CRC, which has a biomarker value for the diagnosis of CRC.