Upregulation of STC2 in colorectal cancer and its clinicopathological significance

BACKGROUND: Stanniocalcin 2 (STC2) is a glycoprotein hormone involved in many biological processes and a secretory protein that regulates malignant tumor progression. The aim of the present study was to further explore the clinicopathological significance and prognostic role of STC2 in colorectal cancer (CRC). METHODS: In this study, STC2 expression was first investigated in Gene Expression Omnibus and The Cancer Genome Atlas, and then validated with the data from our medical center. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to assess the association between prognostic factors and survival outcome. RESULTS: In Gene Expression Omnibus and The Cancer Genome Atlas databases, bioinformatics analysis confirmed that STC2 was significantly increased in CRC compared with that in normal tissues (P<0.01), and CRC patients with high STC2 expression had a shorter overall survival. By analyzing data from our medical center, the results also showed that STC2 expression of CRC tissues was higher than that in normal tissues, whether the transcriptional or protein levels. In the CRC tissues, high STC2 expression was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis (P=0.047), distant metastasis (P=0.040), and advanced clinical stage (P=0.047). Moreover, Kaplan–Meier analyses indicated that high STC2 expression predicted a worse prognosis, and multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that STC2 was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (HR =1.976, 95% CI: 1.092–3.576, P=0.024) in patients with CRC. CONCLUSION: Our results suggested that STC2 played an important role in CRC progression and prognosis, and could be a useful biomarker for survival prediction.