In normal epithelium, adenoma, and cancer from human hereditary polyposis colorectal cancer, S100A10 expression (c2 = 100.989, P = 0.000) was highest in cancer, whereas decorin (c2 = 12.852, P = 0.002) and septin-7 (c2 = 66.519, P = 0.002) expressions were highest in the normal epithelium, which was confirmed via immunohistochemical staining.
The mean plasma decorin in cancer patients was measured to be 5.42 ± 1.83 ng/mL while fibroadenoma patients had an average of 4.22 ± 1.17 ng/mL decorin in their plasma.The difference was not significant.
Accumulating evidence has shown that DCN acts as a ligand of various cytokines and growth factors by directly or indirectly interacting with the corresponding signalling molecules involved in cell growth, differentiation, proliferation, adhesion and metastasis and that DCN especially plays vital roles in cancer cell proliferation, spread, pro-inflammatory processes and anti-fibrillogenesis.
Among small leucine rich proteoglycans, Decorin, Biglycan and Lumican are most commonly implicated markers, and their expression is well studied in various malignancies.
In particular, two small, leucine-rich proteoglycans, biglycan and decorin, play pivotal roles in the regulation of these vital cellular pathways and, as such, are intrinsically involved in cancer initiation and progression.
Although DCN is dysregulated in numerous cancer types, limited data are available on the expression level and important role of DCN proteins in renal cell carcinoma (RCC).
However, conventional HCT-116 colon carcinoma and AG2 colon cancer-initiating cells did not express biglycan and decorin and were versican-positive and -negative, respectively, demonstrating an extracellular origin of the PGs in cancer tissue.
Nevertheless, although decorin has been shown to be differentially expressed in malignant tissues, it has often remained unclear whether, in addition to non-malignant stromal cells, cancer cells also express it.
Decorin regulates the biology of various types of cancer by modulating the activity of several receptor tyrosine kinases coordinating growth, survival, migration, and angiogenesis.
However, increasing decorin expression in colorectal cancer cells attenuated cancer cell malignancy, including inhibition of cancer cell proliferation, promotion of apoptosis and importantly, attenuation of cancer cell migration.
Decreased expression levels of decorin and p57(KIP2) were associated with poor postsurgical survival time and lymphatic metastasis in lung cancer patients; moreover, low expression was an adverse prognostic factor.
Decorin expression was higher than that of versican in the normal larynx; therefore, their disproportionate overexpression during cancer resulted in about equimolar expression.
Thus, decorin gene therapy helps in retarding the growth of human tumors in immunocompromised animals and could represent a new independent or adjunctive therapeutic modality against cancer.