ArticleClinical & experimental metastasis2026
Molecular characterization of colorectal cancer liver metastases with pure desmoplastic versus non-pure desmoplastic histopathological growth patterns using a targeted gene expression panel.
Article in Clinical & experimental metastasis, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The histological growth pattern (HGP) at the interface of colorectal adenocarcinoma liver metastases (CRCLM) and liver parenchyma provides important prognostic information. This study aimed to identify transcriptomic signatures underlying the predominant HGPs in CRCLM. We retrospectively evaluated the HGP of 495 CRCLM of 232 patients with metastasectomy at the University Hospital Regensburg between 2003 and 2016. A representative subset of 106 metastases from 53 patients was analyzed for RNA expression at the metastasis-liver interface using the NanoString nCounter® PanCancer Progression Panel. The most common HGPs in the NanoString subcohort were the infiltrative replacement (rHGP, 47.2%) and the non-infiltrative desmoplastic type (dHGP, 46.3%). Unsupervised clustering of CRCLM gene expression profiles identified four gene clusters, two significantly enriched for pure dHGP or pure rHGP. Differential expression analysis between pure dHGP and all other HGPs (i.e., non-pure dHGP) identified 55 significantly differentially expressed genes. Gene set enrichment analysis corroborated previously reported signals (extracellular matrix organization, stromal/endothelial gene sets, and epithelial-mesenchymal transition enrichment in pure dHGP; glucose metabolism in non-pure dHGP) and additionally revealed α6β4 integrin signaling as feature of non-pure dHGP. Patient identity, rather than HGP, was the dominant driver of gene expression variance, though AGR2 was consistently and significantly overexpressed in non-pure dHGP across different analytical strategies. These findings corroborate known transcriptomic differences between HGPs, identify α6β4 integrin signaling as an additional candidate pathway enriched in non-pure dHGP CRCLM, and underscore the substantial contribution of patient-specific factors to gene expression variability in CRCLM outweighing HGP.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.