Western Blotting to Assess the Expression of Survivin in Colorectal Cancer

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The balance between cell death and proliferation is a key step in cellular homeostasis. Inhibition of apoptosis could trigger an abnormal malignant change. Survivin is a recently reported anti-apoptotic molecule that inhibits the caspase system along the apoptosis pathway. It is expressed in fetal tissue and transformed tissue, but not in normal tissues except durung the mitosis period. Some authors have described abnormal survivin expression in various cancer tissues. We performed western blotting in colorectal cancer to assess the expression pattern of survivin. METHODS: Thirty-four colorectal cancer tissues and adjacent normal colonic epithelia of patients operated an at KCCH from June 1998 were assessed. We used the common western blotting method with the polyclonal anti-survivin antibody. RESULTS: Survivin was expressed in all cases (34 cases, 100%) of cancer tissues and two cases (5.8%) of normal tissue. Seven of 34 cases showed a strong positive result. Univariate analysis of sex, age, stage, original site, lymphatic invasion, neural invasion, and vessel invasion between the positive group and the strongly positive group revealed no significant relationship except for neural invasion. CONCLUSIONS: Survivin should be a good tumor marker of colorectal cancer.