Background: The prognosis of colorectal cancer patients is to a considerable extent determined by the metastatic potency of the primary tumor. However, despite the fact that liver metastases are the leading cause of death for cancer patients, the molecular basis still remains poorly understood and independent prognostic markers have not been established.
Materials and methods: Comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) was used to screen colorectal carcinomas without distant metastases (n=18) and carcinomas synchronously metastatic to the liver (n=18). We aimed to detect distinct chromosomal aberrations indicating a metastatic phenotype.
Results and discussion: Metastatic tumors exhibited a significantly (P=0.03) higher ANCA value (13.8) if compared with non-metastatic cancers (10.0). Furthermore, we observed that losses of chromosomal regions 1p32-ter and 9q33-ter were present at much higher frequencies in metastatic than in non-metastatic cancers, respectively (P=0.02 and 0.04).
Conclusion: These data indicate that metastatic tumors may be separated from non-metastatic colorectal cancers based on their genomic profile.