Genes involved in colon cancer development and progression

Abstract

Colon cancer is the second most common cancer in both men and women in Singapore, with metastasis as the leading cause of deaths. The first aim of this study is to investigate the expression of two closely related histone deacetylase enzymes, HDAC1 and HDAC2. HDAC1 and HDAC2 expression was found to be upregulated in colon cancer tissues, at the mRNA and protein levels. However, the upregulation of HDAC2 was more robust and occurred earlier, at the polyp stage, suggesting that HDAC2 may play a more important role in the development of colon cancer. The second aim of the study is to characterise a set of metastatic variant lines generated from a poorly metastatic HCT116 line. In vitro and in vivo assays, and genetic profiling were utilised in the characterisation. Caveolin-1 was chosen as the focus of our study as a candidate metastasis suppressor gene.