High expression of COL10A1 is associated with poor prognosis in colorectal cancer.

Background: High expression of collagen type X alpha 1 chain (COL10A1), a member of the collagen family, had been observed in various human cancers, but the detailed function and molecular mechanism of COL10A1 were largely unclear.

Aim: The aim of this study was to investigate the expression of COL10A1 in colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues and cells and to reveal its biological function and mechanism in CRC.

Materials and methods: Immunohistochemistry (IHC), real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR) and Western blot experiments were used to determine the clinical relevance between expression levels of COL10A1 and CRC.

Results: Compared with normal tissues, COL10A1 expression was significantly higher in CRC tissues. Biological functional experiments showed that overexpression of COL10A1 enhanced proliferation, migration, and invasion of CRC cells, and knockdown of COL10A1 inhibited tumorigenesis in vivo. Western blot assays showed that COL10A1 promoted the process of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The overexpression of COL10A1 was associated with adverse prognosis in CRC by tissue microarray (TMA) analysis.

Conclusion: Our findings had provided evidences to support the fact that COL10A1 was abnormally up-expressed in CRC and involved in the progression of CRC and the process of EMT. Furthermore, we demonstrated that the high-level expression of COL10A1 was an independent risk factor of prognosis and overall survival in CRC patients. These suggested that COL10A1 might be a new potential target for cancer therapy in the future.