Following the protein biomarker trail to colorectal cancer

摘要

Colorectal cancer is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in women and the third in men, with over 600,000 estimated annual deaths attributed to this disease [l]. The identification of protein biomarkers in colorectal cancer has diagnostic utility and, over the past decade, has accumulated growing prognostic and predictive importance. Classically, colorectal cancer is thought of as a slowly progressive disease following a defined pathway through aberrant crypt foci to adenoma formation, cumulating in invasive malignancy and eventually metastatic disease [2].