Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the world. More than half of all affected patients develop liver metastases during the course of the disease, and over half experience recurrence despite radical primary surgery. Transketolase-like protein 1 (TKTL1) is a key enzyme in the glucose metabolism of cancer cells, and its expression in tumor tissue was previously shown to indicate a poor prognosis in colorectal cancer. In this study, we investigated the prognostic significance of TKTL1 in 111 patients with surgically resected colorectal liver metastases, with a minimum follow-up time of 10.3 years. TKTL1 expression was examined in tissue samples of both primary tumors and liver metastases, and compared to clinicopathological parameters, disease-free survival, and overall survival. We show that a high expression of TKTL1 in primary tumor tissue associated with poor disease-free survival in patients with synchronous liver metastases (P = .026, Kaplan-Meier log-rank test), but with better disease-free survival in patients with metachronous metastases, although not statistically significantly (P = .073). We found similar tendencies for TKTL1 expression in liver metastases. Thus, TKTL1 could serve as a candidate marker to identify patients who benefit from liver resection or who need more aggressive perioperative chemotherapy.

结直肠癌 (CRC) 是世界上第三大最常见的癌症。超过一半的受累患者在疾病过程中发生肝转移，尽管进行了根治性初始手术，超过一半的患者仍会复发。转酮醇酶样蛋白 1 (TKTL1) 是癌细胞葡萄糖代谢的关键酶，其在肿瘤组织中的表达先前已被证明表明结直肠癌的预后较差。在这项研究中，我们研究了 TKTL1 在 111 名手术切除的结直肠肝转移患者中的预后意义，最短随访时间为 10.3 年。在原发肿瘤和肝转移的组织样本中检查 TKTL1 表达，并与临床病理参数、无病生存率和总生存率进行比较。P = .026，Kaplan-Meier 对数秩检验），但异时转移患者的无病生存率更高，尽管没有统计学意义（P = .073）。我们发现肝转移灶中 TKTL1 表达的趋势相似。因此，TKTL1 可以作为候选标志物来识别从肝切除术中获益或需要更积极的围手术期化疗的患者。