Expression and clinical significance of tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2 in colon cancer

Protein-tyrosine phosphatase SHP-2, encoded by gene PTPN11, has been identified as a tumor-promoting factor in several types of leukemia and is hyper-activated by other mechanisms in some solid tumors including gastric cancer, breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), etc. But few were reported on the expression and significances of SHP-2 in colon cancer. Here, we detect SHP-2 expression in colon cancer cells, colon cancer-induced by AOM + DSS in mice and 232 human colon cancer specimens, including 58 groups of self-matched adjacent peritumor tissues and normal tissues. We found that compared to the normal colon tissues, SHP-2 significantly decreased in tumor tissues (P < 0.001). The same results were got in colon tumor cells as well as mice colon tumors. And in humans samples, low SHP-2 expression showed a significantly correlation with poor tumor differentiation (P < 0.05), late TNM stage (P = 0.1666) and lymph node metastasis (P < 0.05)