The role of OPN in liver metastasis was studied in established colon cancer Colo-205 and SW-480 cell lines transfected with sense- or antisense-OPN eukaryotic expression plasmids by flow cytometry and cell adhesion assay.
The median plasma OPN level was significantly higher in patients than in controls (p<0.0001), and significantly higher in patients with advanced stages, serosal invasion, lymph node metastasis, lymphatic invasion, venous invasion and liver metastasis.