Clinicopathologic Significance of LIMK1 Expression in Human Colon Cancer

Objective To investigate the relations between LIMK1 expression and carcinogenesis, tumor size, pathological classification, lymph node metastasis and clinical stages in human colon cancer. Methods Immunohistochemistry method using tissue chip was used to examine the expression of LIMK1 in colon cancer (87 cases), adenoma (26 cases) and normal tissue (34 cases). Results The expression level of LIMK1 in colon cancer was 75.86% (66/87),and significantly higher than 20.58% (7/34) in normal tissue and 38.46% (10/26) in adenoma, respectively.LIMK1 in adenoma was significantly higher than that in the normal tissue (P＜0.05). LIMK1 expression in well-differentiated was 40.00% (4/10) and lower than 70.21% (33/47) in moderately differentiated and 96.67% (29/30) in poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma, LIMK1 expression in moderately differentiated was lower than that in poorly differentiated adenocarcinoma (P＜0.05). The expression of LIMK1 in volume＜5.0 cm of colon cancer was lower than that in volume ≥5.0 cm,57.14%(20/35) vs.88.46% (46/52) (P＜0.05). The expression of LIMK1 of lymph node metastasis was increased compared with non-lymph nale metastasis 97.78% (44/45) vs.52.38% (22/42) (P＜0.05). The expression of LIMK1 in Dukes stage A and B was significantly lower than in C and D 60.98% (25/41) vs.89.13% (41/46) (P＜0.05). There was no significantly correlation between age and the expression of LIMK1 (P＞0.05). Conclusion The expression of LIMK1 is closely related to carcinogenesis, tumor size, pathological classification, lymph node metastasis and clinical stage in colon cancer, suggesting that LIMK1 may be a important biomarker of invasion and metastasis.