Clinicopathological Characterization and Prognostic Implication of SMAD4 Expression in Colorectal Carcinoma

SMAD family member 4 (SMAD4) has gained attention as a promising prognostic factor of colorectal cancer (CRC) as well as a key molecule to understand the tumorigenesis and progression of CRC. We retrospectively analyzed 1,281 CRC cases immunohistochemically for their expression status of SMAD4, and correlated this status with clinicopathologic and molecular features of CRCs. A loss of nuclear SMAD4 was significantly associated with frequent lymphovascular and perineural invasion, tumor budding, fewer tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, higher pT, and pN stage, and frequent distant metastasis. In contrast, tumors overexpressing SMAD4 showed a significant association with sporadic microsatellite instability. After adjustment for TNM stage, tumor differentiation, adjuvant chemotherapy, and lymphovascular invasion, the loss of SMAD4 was found to be an independent prognostic factor for worse 5-year progression-free survival (hazard ratio (HR): 1.27, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.01-1.60, p = .042) and 7-year cancer-specific survival (HR: 1.45, 95% CI = 1.06-1.99, p = .022). We confirmed the value of determining the loss of SMAD4 immunohistochemically as an independent prognostic factor for CRC in general. In addition, we identified some histologic and molecular features that might be clues to elucidate the role of SMAD4 in colorectal tumorigenesis and progression.