Autophagy-related protein LC3β and its association with clinical-pathological characteristics, mismatch repair proteins and survival in colorectal carcinoma

The mean age of patients in our study was 58years. There were more males 61.8% (<i>n</i> = 70) than females 38.6% (<i>n</i> = 44). Most of the patients had high pathological tumor stage of pT3 and pT4. Majority of the tumors showed intermediate tumor budding and weak tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes. The mismatch repair deficiency and HER2 overexpression were found in 14.9% (<i>n</i> = 17) and 2.6% (<i>n</i> = 3) of the cases respectively. LC3β was overexpressed in 36% (<i>n</i> = 41) of the cases and was significantly more common in females (<i>p</i> = 0.013). The LC3β status showed no significant association with age, tumor location, tumor grade, tumor stage, nodal stage, tumor budding, tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes, MMR status, HER2 status or patient survival. Future prospective studies are recommended to further explore the utility of autophagy as a prognostic and predictive biomarker.