Abstract 3075: MUC4 mucin as a potential tumor suppressor in colon cancer

• Published in: Cancer research (Chicago, Ill.) Ill.), 2010-04, Vol.70 (8_Supplement), p.3075-3075
• Main Authors: Das, Srustidhar, Ponnusamy, Moorthy Palanimuthu, Johansson, Sonny L., Senapati, Shantibhusan, Pandey, Poomy, Roy, Hemant K., Batra, Surinder K.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0008-5472; 1538-7445
• DOI: 10.1158/1538-7445.AM10-3075

MUC4 is a heterodimeric large transmembrane mucin expressed by several normal epithelial tissues like testis, lungs and colon and is aberrantly over expressed by most human adenocarcinomas. MUC4 has been strongly implicated to play the role of an oncogene in the progression and metastasis of pancreatic, breast and ovarian cancers. On the other hand, previous reports indicating the loss of MUC4 expression in the progression of colon cancer was starkly in contrast to the role it plays in other cancers. Based on the previous studies, we hypothesized that loss of MUC4 as the tumor progresses might act as a prognostic indicator and MUC4 might act as a potential tumor suppressor in the colon cancer. In the present study, our aim was to investigate the functional significance of MUC4 in colon cancer progression. We performed immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray comparing the expression levels of MUC4 among normal colon, adenoma, adenocarcinoma and metastatic adenocarcinoma. MUC4 immunoreactivity was highest in the normal colon tissue and significantly higher than tubular adenoma, non-metastatic and metastatic adenocarcinoma (p