English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Background  Prognostication of patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) currently relies on tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging but clinical outcomes of patients of the same histoclinical stage are heterogeneous. It is therefore imperative to devise novel molecular tests to stratify CRC patients. Our previous work demonstrated that eukaryotic elongation factor-2 kinase (EEF2K) is a tumor suppressor in CRC. Herein, we investigated EEF2K expression in CRC and determined its relationship with clinicopathological parameters.    Methods  Quantitative RT-PCR and Westerns blots were used to examine EEF2K expression in primary tumor and the adjacent non-tumor tissues of CRC patients ( n  = 20). Kaplan-Meier curves and Cox regression analysis were used to assess the association between clinical outcomes of CRC patients and EEF2K protein expression determined by immunohistochemistry on tissue microarray ( n  = 151).    Results  EEF2K was significantly downregulated at both mRNA and protein levels in tumors of CRC patients. Univariate Cox regression analysis revealed that CRC patients with high tumor grade, advanced TNM staging and low EEF2K expression were associated with worse overall survival. Multivariate analysis further demonstrated that low EEF2K expression was an independent factor for predicting poorer overall survival in CRC patients ( p  = 0.014; Hazard ratio = 2.951; 95% confidence interval: 1.240–7.024). The 5-year survival rate was 82.8% in the EEF2K-high-expression group versus 63.9% in the EEF2K-low-expression group ( p  = 0.0118). The association of overall survival with EEF2K expression in CRC patients was verified in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort.    Conclusions  EEF2K is downregulated in CRC and its expression can be employed as a prognostic marker for CRC patients independent of TNM staging.    Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (10.1186/s12885-019-5873-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Eukaryotic elongation factor-2 kinase expression is an independent prognostic factor in colorectal cancer