Prognostic significance of CXCL12 expression in patients with colorectal carcinoma

The present study investigated the protein expression level of CXCL12 in colorectal cancer and aimed to elucidate its association with prognosis. CXCL12 positivity in 50% or more of tumor cells was defined as high expression and that in less than 50% of the tumor cells as low expression. CXCL12+ tumor budding at the invasive front was divided into 2 grades: high with 10 or more budding foci per x200 field of view and low grade with fewer than 10 budding foci. Patients with high expression (72.7%) and high grade CXCL12+ tumor budding (43.0%) had significantly shorter survival than patients with low expression (P = .014) and low grade (P = .003), respectively. Patients with a combination of high expression and high grade had the worst outcome (P < .001). Our study demonstrated that CXCL12 expression in colorectal cancer cells and at sites of budding were significant prognostic factors. Furthermore, together with lymph node metastasis, a combination of both expression patterns was a more powerful independent prognostic factor.