Objective:To study the expression of ALDH1 in colon cancer and its clinical significance.
Methods:The expression of ALDH1 was examined in 98 surgical specimens of primary colonic carcinoma and 15 adjacent cancer tissues with immunohistochemistry method. The correlations of the ALDH1 expression with clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of colon cancer were analyzed．
Results:The positive rate of expression of ALDH1 was 76.5%(75/98) in cancer tissues and 13.3%(2/15) in adjacent cancer tissues. There was an obvious statistical difference (P＜0.05) between the two groups. The ALDH1 expression was significantly correlated with the histological grade, TNM stages and lymph node metastasis of colon cancer (P＜0.05). It was also related with patients′survival time, and those with positive expressions had a poor prognosis (P＜0.05).
Conclusions:The results suggest that the overexpression of ALDH1 plays important role in development and progression of colon cancer, and ALDH1 may be a valuable marker to predict the biological behavior and trend of metastasis of colon cancer．