The clinical significance of findings in colorectal cancer was investigated by detecting CK20-positive CTCs (pCTC) in patients with colorectal cancer, other common cancers, colorectal adenoma, benign colorectal diseases, and normal subjects.
Multi-marker phenotypes with CK20 and CDX2 negativity were more frequently found in mismatch repair-deficient than in mismatch repair-proficient colorectal cancer (19.3 vs 7.5% and 21.6 vs 6.7%, respectively; P<0.001).
mRNA for carcinoembryonic antigen and cytokeratin 20 was identified by RT-PCR in blood from patients with colorectal cancer, before and after primary tumour resection.
However, peritoneal recurrence-free survival was not different between CEA (CK20) mRNA-positive and -negative CRC patients, in quite contrast to GC cases.
These results suggest that detecting CEA/CK20 mRNA in tumor drainage blood by real-time RT-PCR has prognostic value in patients with colorectal cancer.
The aim of this study was to verify the usefulness of the estimation of CEA and CK20 gene expressions in tissues of colorectal cancers and their liver metastases.
A total of 198 blood samples including 168 from colorectal carcinoma (CRC) patients and 30 from healthy volunteers were examined by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) to evaluate the expression of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cytokeratin 20 (CK20) and cytokeratin 19 (CK19) mRNA.
Our results suggest that the concomitant detection of CK20 plus GCC and/or the presence of mutated K-ras are a rational approach for tracking CEC/DTC in CRC patients.
Nodal expression of the carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), cytokeratin 20 (CK20), and guanylyl cyclase C (GCC) genes was measured in tandem in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) to assess whether there would be sufficient agreement between these markers in their ability to detect micrometastasis to qualify one of them as a universal marker, and whether frozen and paraffin wax embedded tissues would yield similar results.
Although the present technique could not distinguish CRC from CID, the method warrants further efforts to improve sample preparation and tumor cell enrichment, which may render real-time CK20 reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction a feasible technique in identifying circulating tumor cells in peripheral blood of cancer patients.
Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and cytokeratin 20 (CK20) were chosen as markers because they are selectively expressed in epithelial cells with maintained expression in CRC.
The aim of this prospective study was to relate the incidences of cytokeratin 20 (CK20) and guanylylcyclase C (GCC) in lymph node, liver, and bone marrow specimens of 245 colorectal cancer (CRC) patients with the K-ras oncogene status of the corresponding primary tumor.
Evaluation of cytokeratin 20 (CK20) specific quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (QRT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) for detection of occult tumor cells in lymph nodes of 72 patients with colorectal carcinoma (UICC stage I and II).
Our study shows that decreased or even absent CK20 expression is a phenotypic characteristic of MSI-H CRC and that MSI-H explains much of the subset of CRC that lack CK20 expression.
To identify patients with an increased risk of tumor recurrence and evaluate the prognostic value of cytokeratin-20 (CK-20), we detected CK-20-positive cells in histopathologically tumor-free lymph nodes (pN0) of patients with colorectal cancer.
In contrast, CK20 gene expression is not an established marker for the classification of tumours and the detection of disseminated cancer cells in colorectal cancer.
The detection of CK20 mRNA expression in lymph nodes is recommended to precisely determine tumor stage and postoperative adjuvant therapy for patients with colorectal cancer, and further studies should be done in future to confirm the findings.
Quantitatively, CK20 expression levels in colorectal cancer lymph nodes significantly exceeded the levels obtained in lymph nodes of extracolonic carcinomas (P < 0.05).
CK 20 RT-PCR assay has been extensively used to detect isolated cancer cells in peripheral blood, lymph nodes and bone marrow samples of patients with colorectal carcinoma.
Tissue samples from 24 patients with pancreatic cancer and from 41 patients with colorectal cancer were examined for CK 20 expression by Northern blot analysis, immunohistochemistry, and in situ hybridization.