Presence of a high amount of stroma and downregulation of SMAD4 predict for worse survival for stage I-II colon cancer patients.

CONCLUSIONS: Conventional haematoxylin-eosin stained tumor slides contain more prognostic information than previously fathomed. This can be unleashed by assessing the tumor-stroma ratio. The combination of analyzing the tumor-stroma ratio and staining for SMAD4 results in an independent parameter for confident prediction of clinical outcome. PMID: 19478385 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: Analytical Cellular Pathology - Category: Cancer & Oncology Tags: Cell Oncol Source Type: research