Significant co-expression of putative cancer stem cell markers, EpCAM and CD166, correlates with tumor stage and invasive behavior in colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND: The crucial oncogenic role of cancer stem cells (CSCs) in tumor maintenance, progression, drug resistance, and relapse has been clarified in different cancers, particularly in colorectal cancer (CRC). The current study was conducted to evaluate the co-expression pattern and clinical significance of epithelial cell adhesion molecules (EpCAM) and activated leukocyte cell adhesion (CD166 or ALCAM) in CRC patients. METHODS: This study was carried out on 458 paraffin-embedded CRC specimens by immunohistochemistry on tissue microarray (TMA) slides. RESULTS: Elevated expression of EpCAM and CD166 was observed in 61.5% (246/427) and 40.5% (164/405) of CRC cases. Our analysis showed a significant positive association of EpCAM expression with tumor size (P = 0.02), tumor stage (P = 0.007), tumor differentiate (P = 0.005), vascular (P = 0.01), neural (P = 0.01), and lymph node (P = 0.001) invasion. There were no significant differences between CD166 expression and clinicopathological parameters. Moreover, the combined analysis demonstrated a reciprocal significant correlation between EpCAM and CD166 expression (P = 0.02). Interestingly, there was a significant positive correlation between EpCAM/CD166 phenotypes expression and tumor stage (P = 0.03), tumor differentiation (P = 0.05), neural, and lymph node invasion (P =0.01). CONCLUSIONS: The significant correlation of EpCAM and CD166 expression and their association with tumor progression and aggressive behavior is the reason for the suggestion of these two CSC markers as promising targets to promote novel effective targeted-therapy strategies for cancer treatment in the present study. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12957-021-02469-y.