Connective tissue growth factor expression hints at aggressive nature of colorectal cancer

Figure 1 Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis of connective tissue growth factor mRNA across the colorectal cancer tissues and their adjacent normals (n = 71). mRNA: Messenger RNA; CTGF: Connective tissue growth factor.

Figure 2 Representative images of immunohistochemical expression of the connective tissue growth factor protein in colorectal cancer and adjacent normal (H & E and DAB Chromogen × 100 insect × 400). A: Negative control; B: Tumor negative staining; C: Tumor + 1, weak staining; D: Tumor + 2, moderate staining; E: Tumor + 3, strong staining. Scale bars: 100 μM.

Figure 3 Connective tissue growth factor. A: The connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) is upregulated in human colorectal cancer (CRC) samples. Representative Immunoblot showing expression of tumors and their adjacent normals in CRC. Lane N: Normal; Lane T: Tumor. β-actin is used as a loading control. About 40 μg protein loaded on 12% sodium dodecyl sulphate-Gel transferred to polyvinylidene difluoride membrane, anti-β actin primary Ab (1:1000), anti-CTGF primary Ab (1:500); B: Normalized densitometric values. The experiments were performed in triplicates; mean and standard error was calculated. CTGF: Connective tissue growth factor.

Figure 4 Bar graph showing the average fold change of connective tissue growth factor overexpression in colorectal cancer tumors and their adjacent normal tissue with error bars.

Figure 5 Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of 71 colorectal cancer patients from the time of diagnosis of the disease with connective tissue growth factor protein expression. A: Overall survival (OS) with connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) High and low expression; B: Disease-free survival (DFS) with CTGF High and Low expression; C and D: Depict OS and DFS of colorectal cancer patients respectively stratified as Stage I + II and III + IV.

Figure 6 Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of 71 colorectal cancer patients after surgery with connective tissue growth factor protein expression. A and B: Depicts the overall and disease-free survival with connective tissue growth factor High and Low expression respectively; C and D: Shows the overall and disease-free survival of colorectal cancer patients respectively, stratified as Stage I + II and III + IV. CTGF: Connective tissue growth factor; OS: Overall survival; DFS: Disease-free survival.

Figure 7 Connective tissue growth factor classification tree analysis for disease-free and overall survival of colorectal cancer patients; the numbers in the circles and boxes shows connective tissue growth factor high expression and percentage of the positive markers per total number of cases and arrows show the significant P values. A: Tree model of connective tissue growth factor high expression showing that tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, duke stage, lymph node status and Necrosis of tumor tissue were independent predictors for disease-free survival; B: Depicts that TNM Stage and perineural invasion status were independent predictors for overall survival of colorectal cancer patients. ^aP < 0.05. CRC: Colorectal cancer; CTGF: Connective tissue growth factor; PNI: Perineural invasion.