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ISRN Oncology
Volume 2012 (2012), Article ID 139268, 19 pages
doi:10.5402/2012/139268
General Aspects of Colorectal Cancer
Departament de Bioquímica i Biologia Molecular, Facultat de Biologia, Universitat de Barcelona, Avenida Diagonal 643, Catalunya, 08028 Barcelona, Spain
Received 23 September 2012; Accepted 11 October 2012
Academic Editors: H. Al-Ali, N. Fujimoto, L. Mutti, and R. Nahta
Copyright © 2012 Josep J. Centelles. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the main causes of death. Cancer is initiated by several DNA damages, affecting proto-oncogenes, tumour suppressor genes, and DNA repairing genes. The molecular origins of CRC are chromosome instability (CIN), microsatellite instability (MSI), and CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP). A brief description of types of CRC cancer is presented, including sporadic CRC, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer (HNPCC) or Lynch syndromes, familiar adenomatous polyposis (FAP), MYH-associated polyposis (MAP), Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS), and juvenile polyposis syndrome (JPS). Some signalling systems for CRC are also described, including Wnt-β-catenin pathway, tyrosine kinase receptors pathway, TGF-β pathway, and Hedgehog pathway. Finally, this paper describes also some CRC treatments.