CYP24A1 is a potential biomarker for the progression and prognosis of human colorectal cancer.

Our study aims to fully evaluate clinicopathological and prognostic values of CYP24A1 in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Tissue microarrays of formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tumor samples and matched adjacent nontumor colorectal tissues from 99 CRC patients were studied for CYP24A1 protein expression by immunohistochemistry. Messenger RNA expression of CYP24A1 was further evaluated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction in 12 pairs of fresh frozen CRC samples. CYP24A1 expression was significantly higher in CRC tissues compared to corresponding noncancerous tissues. The expression of CYP24A1 protein in CRC was correlated with the depth of tumor invasion (P = .000), lymph node metastasis (P = .030), venous permeation (P = .016), and overall survival (P = .008). A Kaplan-Meier analysis of the CRC patients with high CYP24A1 expression showed significantly reduced overall survival and disease-free survival compared to the patients with low expression (P = 0.026 and .009). A prognostic significance of CYP24A1 was also found in the subgroup of venous permeation condition classification. A multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that CYP24A1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for CRC recurrence (P = .032). In conclusion, CYP24A1 expression is closely associated with CRC progression, and it might be a novel prognostic biomarker for CRC.