| Summary: | Colorectal cancer is one of the most prevalent malignancies worldwide with approximately 1 million cases diagnosed each year, and 500 000 deaths. If diagnosed early over 95% of patients would benefit from curative surgery. Large scale randomised studies have demonstrated a reduction in mortality with mass screening programmes. Current methods employed for screening for colorectal cancer involved the faecal occult blood test. This investigation maintains an average sensitivity for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer with poor compliance from the population. This study aimed to investigate and validate new biomarkers for the diagnosis of colorectal cancer. BORIS is a paralogue of the transcription factor CTCF. BORIS is found to be expressed normally in spermatocytes in the testis, however aberrant expression has been found to play a part in tumour development. This study set out to analyse the role of BORIS as a potential biomarker for colorectal cancer. BORIS expression in the leukocytes of colorectal cancer patients was assessed via both Western blotting and immunocytochemistry. Furthermore its expression was compared III colorectal cancer tissue and matched normal tissue by immunohistochemistry. Minimal positive expression was demonstrated for BORIS in A the leukocytes, with only two out of sixty patients showing positive expression by both methods. Similar findings were noted in the analysis of tissue samples, although significantly higher immunoreactivity was identified in the colorectal cancer tissue in comparison with the normal group. This study concluded BORIS has a limited role as a biomarker for colorectal cancer. A smaller further study set out to identify significant proteins as possible biomarkers in the leukocytes of colorectal cancer patients via two dimensional gel electrophoresis.
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