TC-1 (C8orf4) expression is correlated with differentiation in ovarian carcinomas and might distinguish metastatic ovarian from metastatic colorectal carcinomas

Thyroid cancer 1 (TC-1, C8orf4) is involved in the development of many cancers. In this study, we investigated the correlation between the expression of TC-1 and the clinicopathological characteristics of ovarian and colorectal adenocarcinomas. We also explored the possible use of TC-1 as a marker to distinguish between metastatic tumors of the ovary and colorectum. We used immunohistochemistry to examine the expression level of TC-1 in 100 ovarian and 100 colorectal adenocarcinomas and 25 metastatic carcinomas with the ovary or colorectum as primary site. TC-1 was expressed in all ovarian carcinoma samples. The high expression rate of TC-1 was 84 % in ovarian carcinomas, which was much higher than that observed in colorectal adenocarcinomas (35 %, P < 0.001). High expression of TC-1 significantly correlated with poor differentiation of ovarian carcinomas (P = 0.013). To explore the value of TC-1 in distinguishing metastatic ovarian cancers from colorectal cancers, we found the area under the receiver operator characteristic curve of TC-1 to be 0.819 (95 % confidence interval, 0.760–0.878; P < 0.001). Furthermore, TC-1 was highly expressed in 100 % of nine metastatic ovarian cancers, but only in 31 % of 16 metastatic colorectal cancers. The higher expression of TC-1 in ovarian compared to colorectal adenocarcinomas suggests its potential use as a marker, to distinguish between metastatic ovarian and colorectal adenocarcinomas.