A modified protein marker panel to identify four consensus molecular subtypes in colorectal cancer using immunohistochemistry

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a heterogeneous disease with different genetic and molecular backgrounds, leading to diverse patient prognosis treatment response. Four consensus subtypes (CMS 1–4) have recently been proposed based on transcriptome profiling. A clinically practical immunohistochemistry (IHC) CMS classifier consisting of the four markers FRMD6, ZEB1, HTR2B, CDX2 was then demonstrated. However, IHC-CMS did not distinguish between CMS2 CMS3 tumours. In this study, we applied IHC-based classifiers in CRC cohort 65 patients found concordance 77.5 %. Further, modified by analysing differentially expressed genes tumours using RNA-sequencing data from TCGA dataset. The result showed that WNT signalling among most upregulated pathways tumours, expression level CTNNB1 (encoding β-catenin), pathway hallmark, significantly (P = 1.15 × 10−6). We therefore introduced nuclear β-catenin staining classifier. Using our cohort, 71.4 % IHC classifiers. Moreover, could classify 16 out 19 CMS2/3 into or CMS3, thereby showing an 84.2 RNA-sequencing-based conclusion, evaluated analysis. present panel categorizes groups. To knowledge, first study identify all