Expression of a novel apoptosis inhibitor-survivin in colorectal carcinoma

AIM: To investigate the role of survivin expression in the pathogenesis of colorectal carcinoma. METHODS: Immunohistochemistry S-P method and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) were used to detect the expression of survivin and apoptotic cell in situ in colorectal cancerous tissues, para-cancerous tissues and normal tissues of 48 cases of colorectal carcinoma. RESULTS: The survivin positive unit (PU) was higher in cancerous tissues (38.76 +/- 5.14) than in para-cancerous (25.17 +/- 7.26) or normal tissues (0.57 +/- 0.03) (P<0.05). The apoptosis index (AI) of para-cancerous tissues was (7.51 +/- 2.63%) higher than cancerous tissues (4.65 +/- 1.76%). The expression of survivin was associated with pathological grade, lymph node metastasis and Dukes stage of colorectal carcinoma. CONCLUSION: Survivin expression may play an important role in carcinogenesis of colorectal carcinoma and may be associated with malignant biological behaviors of colorectal carcinoma. (C) 2005 The WJG Press andElsevier Inc. All rights reserved.