KDM3A, a Novel Blood-Based Biomarker in Colorectal Carcinogenesis

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer-linked deaths globally. The determination of biomarkers is important in the prognosis and treatment of CRC. Previous studies emphasized the relationship between hypoxia and CRC in humans, and there is strong evidence that this process is strongly related to HIF-1. KDM3A is a histone demethylase that could directly bind to HIF-1α, a subunit of HIF-1. This study aimed to reveal whether the expression level of the gene could be used as a predictor of CRC. The expression levels of , and Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) genes were evaluated by qRT-PCR in leukocyte samples of 50 CRC patients in different stages and 50 healthy controls. and expression levels were significantly higher in the CRC group, compared to the controls. and genes, the mesenchymal markers, showed the same significance pattern between groups. We acquired 0.664 AUC with 54% sensitivity and 85.4% specificity for separating controls from CRC patients by using the expression levels in ROC analysis. This data support that could be a novel supplementary biomarker in diagnosis of CRC, which could be noninvasively detected in circulation.