Gene expression profiling study to identify distinct subtypes in Peritoneal metastasis of colorectal cancer

The objective of this study is to assess gene expression changes and identify gene sets associated with metastasis into peritoneum in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. We performed RNA-seq based transcriptome profiling using primary tumor samples obtained from 19 CRC patients with peritoneum metastasis. By a number of statistical tests, a total of 1,422 genes were statistically significant, indicating a gene set significantly associated with metastasis into peritoneum in CRC. To select the genes showing strong gene expression intensities and critically validate the differences between CRCs with metastasis and without metasis, we applied more rigorous cut-off for gene selection, revealing candidates less than 20 genes. These genes were applied to the downstream experimental assays.