Aim: To study the relationship between particularly interesting new cysteine-histidine rich protein (PINCH) expression and clinicopathological factors in Chinese colorectal cancer patients.
Methods: The expression of PINCH was examined by immumohistochemistry in 141 samples of primary colorectal adenocarcinoma and 92 normal samples of colorectal mucosa. Eighty of the cases had both primary tumour and normal mucosa from the same patients.
Results: PINCH was expressed in the stroma of normal mucosa and tumours. PINCH expression in tumour-associated stroma was increased compared to normal mucosa in both unmatched cases (n = 141, c2 = 85.79, df = 3, P < 0.0001) and matched cases (n = 80, c2 = 45.86, df = 3, P < 0.0001). Among 135 tumours with visible invasive margin, 86 (64%) showed stronger PINCH expression at the invasive margin than in the intratumoural stroma. The frequency of PINCH strong expression in mucinous and signet-ring cell carcinomas was higher (52%) compared to non-mucinous carcinomas (29%, c2 = 5.13, P = 0.02). We did not find that PINCH expression was related to patient's gender, age, tumour location, tumour size, gross status, histological type, differentiation, invasion depth, lymph node status and Dukes'stage (P > 0.05).
Conclusion: The expression of PINCH was upregulated in colorectal cancers, and especially at the margin of tumours, and further was related to mucinous and signet-ring cell carcinomas. The results suggest that expression of PINCH may be involved in the tumourigenesis and aggressiveness of colorectal cancers.