Investigation of the changes in the expression levels of MOZ gene in colorectal cancer tissues

Background: MOZ is one of the most important histone acetyltransferases (HATs) that has an effective role in gene expression. It is an important partner in chromosomal rearrangement that usually occurs in hematological malignancies such as leukemia. Besides these malignancies, its role in solid tumors has been reported. In the present study, we aimed to quantify of MOZ messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in colorectal cancer (CRC) tissues from a northwest population of Iran and consequently to assess the effect of MOZ in CRC. Methods: Tumorous and adjacent non-tumorous tissues recruited from 26 patients with CRC. mRNA extraction and complementary DNA (cDNA) synthesis were performed from these tissues, at the next step quantitative real-time reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was carried out. Finally, expression levels were statistically analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 software and independent t-test. Statistical significance was considered as P <= 0.05. Results: The results showed significantly higher expression of MOZ in the majority of CRC tissues compared to normal colorectal tissues (P=0.048). There were no significant correlations between expression levels of MOZ and clinical parameters of patients (P>0.05). Conclusions: Our data showed that dysregulation of MOZ is potentially involved in the pathogenesis of CRC and we could suggest that there is a straight relationship between tumor formation and MOZ expression. These results showed possible role of MOZ as a prognostic factor in the said population.