High expression of CDH3 predicts a good prognosis for colon adenocarcinoma patients

Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is one of the most common types of malignancy of the digestive system, and a better understanding of the molecular mechanisms will contribute to an improvement in the quality of life for COAD patients. Cadherin 3 (CDH3), a gene encoding P-cadherin, is a major component of adherens junctions and is closely associated with the occurrence and development of a variety of tumor types. However, the current knowledge regarding the role of CDH3 in COAD is limited. The present study aimed to identify the relative mRNA and protein expression levels of CDH3 in COAD tissues, and whether CDH3 had any influence on the survival rate of patients with COAD. Analysis of differentially expressed genes using the UALCAN database revealed that CDH3 was significantly upregulated in COAD tissues, and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR analysis further confirmed that CDH3 was upregulated in 48 COAD tissues compared with that in their paired normal tissues (n=48). Consistent with this, analysis of the Human Protein Atlas database indicated that the expression levels of the CDH3 protein were upregulated in COAD tissues (n=11) compared with those in normal tissues (n=3; P=0.0245). Next, the association between the mRNA levels of CDH3 and the survival rate of the COAD patients was analyzed using the UALCAN database, and the Kaplan-Meier curves revealed that the CDH3 high expression group (n=69) had a better overall survival compared with that of the CDH3 medium/low expression group (n=210; P=0.037). Furthermore, analysis of clinical data of a cohort from our hospital indicated that the median survival time for COAD patients with high (n=20) and low (n=20) CDH3 levels was 55.5 and 43.5 months, respectively, and there was a significant difference in the survival time between the two groups (P=0.0078). The above results verified that CDH3 was significantly upregulated in the COAD tissues and that high expression of CDH3 predicts a good prognosis for COAD patients.