TMPRSS4 overexpression promotes the metastasis of colorectal cancer and predicts poor prognosis of stage III–IV colorectal cancer

Purpose To study in detail the expression pattern and prognostic significance of TMPRSS4 in colorectal cancer.Methods The expression of TMPRSS4 protein was determined using Western blot in the colorectal cancer tissues and normal tissues. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the TMPRSS4 expression in colorectal cancer tissues, and the clinicopathologic characteristics and prognostic significance were analyzed.Results TMPRSS4 overexpression was associated with tumor budding, lymphovascular invasion, perineural invasion, cancerous emboli, infiltration depth, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, and tumor node metastasis stage (P< 0.05 for all). Interestingly, TMPRSS4 expression in the tumor budding, tumor emboli, lymph node, and liver metastatic tumor samples was higher than in the paired primary tumors. In contrast, TMPRSS4 overexpression is inversely correlated with both the overall survival and the disease-free survival of the patients with colorectal cancer (P< 0.05 for both). Also, we found that TMPRSS4 is only of significance in predicting the prognosis of stage III and IV colorectal cancer, not stage I and II.Conclusions TMPRSS4 was shown to be involved in the whole process of metastasis from tumor budding to lymph node and/or distant metastasis in colorectal cancer and predicted the unfavorable prognosis of stage III–IV, indicating that it is a novel target for the precise treatment of colorectal cancer with lymph node or distant organ metastasis.