Early detection of liver metastasis is important for improving colorectal cancer (CRC) patient survival. Our previous studies showed haptoglobin was highly expressed in primary CRC tissues, especially in heterochronous metastatic cases. Here, we assessed the potential of serum haptoglobin (sHP) as a biomarker for early detection of CRC liver metastasis by evaluating the sHP in 475 CRC patients and 152 healthy volunteers. In the training set (250 cases), sHP level in CRC-M1 (1773.18 6 690.25 ng/ mL) were significantly increased as compared to in CRC-M0 (1544.37 6 1497.65 ng/mL) or healthy (917.76 6 571.59 ng/mL). And the high sHP level was correlated with poor survival. Logistic regression analysis revealed that sHP, serum carcinoembryonic antigen (sCEA) and serum carbohydrate antigen 19.9 (sCA19.9) level were the significant parameters for detecting liver metastasis. In leave-one-out-cross-validation, these three markers resulted in 89.1% sensitivity and 85.8% specificity for hepatic metastasis detection. In an independent test set (225 cases), receiver operating characteristic curve analysis of sHP in CRC liver metastasis showed an area under the curve of 0.735, with a sensitivity of 87.2% and a specificity of 59.9%. Combination of sHP, sCEA and sCA19.9 improved diagnostic accuracy to 0.880, with a sensitivity of 88.5% and a specificity of 87.8%. Silencing of HP by specific shRNA significantly inhibited the LOVO and SW620 cell invasion, and suppressed xenograft tumor invasive growth. In summary, these results demonstrate that sHP is associated with poor prognosis of CRC patients and that HP promotes colorectal cancer cell invasion. sHP combining with sCA19.9 and sCEA may be used as accurate predictors of CRC liver metastasis.Colorectal cancer liver metastasis is one of the major causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide. It is estimated that 15-25% of the colorectal cancer (CRC) patients have liver metastases at the time of initial diagnosis (synchronous), and another about 20% of the CRC patients will develop liver metastases after resection of the primary tumor (heterochronous).1 The 5-year overall survival rate of patients with hepatic metastasis is only 25-40%; while that of patients without hepatic metastasis is 69.5-95.7%. 2 Thus, early detection of liver metastasis is important for improving patient survival.
3HP is a secreted glycoprotein, and the elevated concentrations of total serum HP or fucosylated haptoglobin (Fuc-Hpt) was detected in patients with inflammatory diseases and a variety of cancers. [4][5][6][7] In CRC, the levels of Fuc-Hpt were significantly associated with distant metastasis in 77 CRC cases, but the Fuc-Hpt levels were not correlated with those of total serum HP level.5 Previously, we have proved that protein levels of HP were significantly higher in the primary CRC tissues with heterochronous liver metastasis. 8 We reasonably speculated that the total level HP in CRC serum might be a good indicator for CRC liver metastasis. Until now, there is no research about the association bet...