Promising biomarker for colorectal cancer found by researchers

A new promising biomarker for colorectal cancer (CRC) that might benefit therapy and patient survival rates has been found by researchers from the University of Luxembourg.

The researchers, an interdisciplinary team composed of experimental and computational scientists from the Molecular Disease Mechanisms (MDM) group at the Life Sciences Research Unit of the University of Luxembourg, discovered the biomarker in their recent study supported by the Fondation Cancer and the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR).

“The strength of the study lies in the concerted effort and the interdisciplinary approaches, involving bioinformatics and state-of-the-art experimental techniques. Especially the financial support from the Fondation Cancer has been crucial for the successful completion of our biomarker projects,” explains Dr Elisabeth Letellier, principal investigator in the MDM group.

Biomarkers are measurable biological indicators for a specific disease and can therefore assist in the diagnosis, identification of disease stage and determination of recurrence risk. For CRC early diagnosis and determination of stage is important as it can impact the choice of treatment, for example, not all CRC patients benefit from chemotherapy.

In this study, the team used publicly available gene expression data from a previously completed meta-analysis to identify a protein family, ‘Myosin’, and in particular, MYO5B as a potential prognostic marker for CRC. MYO5B was found to decrease as CRC progresses in the meta-analysis. Additionally, it was found that CRC patients with low MYO5B expression had significantly lower chances of disease and metastasis-free survival.

Overall, the data collected by the group identified the protein MYO5B as a powerful prognostic biomarker for CRC, particularly for the early stages of the disease, and as such may assist in the stratification of patients with stage II for adjuvant chemotherapy.