Down-regulation of Tip60 gene as a potential marker for the malignancy of colorectal cancer.

Background: Recently, it was shown that the loss of human Tip60 leads to an accumulation of double-strand DNA breaks and is linked to a growing number of cancer types.
Patients and Methods: Tip60 expression levels were in examined in 38 colorectal cancer samples using a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Subsequently, clinicopathological data were correlated with the Tip60 expression score.
Results: A down-regulation of the Tip60 gene was observed 5 out of 38 (13%) specimens of primary colorectal cancer. Tip60 down-regulation showed significant correlation with larger tumor size (p=0.0005), poorly differentiated type (p=0.0394), peritoneal dissemination (p=0.0053), distant metastasis (p=0.0394), and higher stage of TNM classification (p=0.0226).
Conclusion: These results suggested that Tip60 was more frequently down-regulated in advanced colorectal carcinoma.