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Overweight is believed to be associated with colorectal cancer risk. Adipose tissue is loose connective tissue composed of adipocytes. It is now recognized as a major endocrine organ, secreting humoral factors collectively called adipokines. Aberrant hormonal systems consisting of modulated adipokines and their receptors are thought to play a role in colorectal carcinogenesis and cancer progression in obese conditions. However, it is still unclear whether and how each adipokine relates to colorectal carcinogenesis. Notably, a couple of molecules that were initially proposed to be obesity-related adipokines were disqualified by subsequent studies. The adipokines, adiponectin, and intelectin-1 (also known as omentin-1), whose levels are decreased in obesity, act as tumor suppressor factors in various cancers. Numerous studies have demonstrated a link between the insufficient expression and function of adiponectin and its receptor, T-cadherin, in colorectal carcinogenesis. Moreover, our recent study indicated that loss of TMEM207, which is critical for the proper processing of intelectin-1 in the colon mucosa, leads to insufficient intelectin-1 production, thus participating in colorectal carcinogenesis. Here, we discuss the recent understanding of the role of adipokines in colorectal carcinogenesis and subsequently describe the potent tumor suppressor roles of intelectin-1 and TMEM207 in colorectal cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

“Amphicrine” (in Greek, amphi-means “both” or “double”) refers to cells that synchronously exhibit the endocrine and exocrine phenotypes. Gastric amphicrine carcinoma is very rare, and only a few case reports are found in the English literature; thus, its pathobiological features remain unclear. Here, we report a case of amphicrine gastric carcinoma. A woman in her sixth decade of life presented with anemia and underwent upper endoscopy, followed by histopathological examination of biopsy specimens. She appeared to have gastric cancer with a tumor measuring 5.0 cm × 4.0 cm in size. Subsequently, the patient underwent total gastrectomy with lymph node dissection. Histopathological examination revealed a poorly cohesive carcinoma that sparsely coexisted with signet-ring cell carcinoma cells with regional lymph node metastasis. Interestingly, synaptophysin immunoreactivity with the coexistence of Alcian blue was found in individual signet-ring cell carcinoma cells. Furthermore, the present amphicrine carcinoma cells immunohistochemically expressed CD44 variant 9, a functional cancer stem cell marker. We believe that the present case findings may support the idea of multipotent stem cells being an origin of amphicrine gastric cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]