Background: Most deaths from colorectal carcinoma are due to metastases. A relatively reliable prognostic indicator at surgery to date is the Dukes' stage, but this is a morphologic approach that does not elucidate biochemical changes to explain why cells became metastatic. The binding sites for the lectin from the Roman snail Helix pomatia (HPA) were shown to be good prognostic indicators in breast and gastric cancer, and accordingly, this study was performed to evaluate the use of HPA binding sites as prognostic markers in colorectal carcinoma.
Methods: The histochemically detected expression of HPA binding sites in colorectal carcinomas (n = 130) was increased. The results of the histochemical findings were correlated with patient survival and tumor recurrence.
Results: The results indicated that the prognosis for the groups of patients whose colorectal cancer cells binded to HPA in tissue sections was almost as bad as those with Dukes' Stage C disease.
Conclusion: Because HPA binds to N-acetylgalactosamine, the authors' results indicate that this sugar residue is at least partly involved in the process of human colorectal carcinoma cells metastasizing to regional lymph nodes and possibly also to distant sites.