Abstract Cancer cells rely upon fatty acids (FA) for proliferation, survival, and metastasis. Overexpression of long-chain acyl CoA synthetase 1 (ACSL1), responsible for long-chain FA synthesis, can increase cell invasion and proliferation. Uncoupling protein-2 (UCP2) promotes FA metabolism over glucose utilization in colorectal cancer cells. We aimed to investigate the association of UCP2 45bp ins/del and ACSL1 rs8086 polymorphisms with the clinicopathological characteristics in patients with colorectal cancer. The study included 183 patients with colorectal cancer, 110 (60.1%) men and 73 (39.9%) women, with an average age of 62.1 years. Clinicopathological characteristics: tumor location, histological differentiation, presence of lymph node metastases, presence of distant metastases, and stage of the disease were collected for all patients. Rs8086 polymorphism genotypes were detected by Real-time PCR using TaqMan ® SNP Genotyping assay, while genotyping of 45 bp ins/del polymorphism was performed using the PCR method. Distant metastases were more frequent in carriers of the ACSL1 TT genotype than carriers of the CC or CT genotype (p=0.046). Also, carriers of the UCP2 45 I allele (II+ID genotype) had distant metastases more frequently than patients with the DD genotype (p=0.029). It has also been observed that there is a statistically significant association of ACSL1 and UCP2 genotype with cancer localization (p=0.006 and p=0.017, respectively). The results suggest that ACSL1 rs8086 and UCP2 45 bp ins/del polymorphisms are associated with the occurrence of distant metastases and tumor location in patients with colorectal cancer.
Ajaj et al. (Mon,) studied this question.