Research Article Preoperative Serum Levels of Mesothelin in Patients with Colon Cancer Özgür BostancJ, 1 Özgür Kemik, 2 Ahu Kemik, 3 Muharrem Battal, 1 Uygar Demir, 1 Sevim Purisa, 4 Alpaslan Yavuz, 5 and Mehmet MihmanlJ 1 1 S ¸is ¸li Hamidiye Etfal Training and Research Hospital General Surgery Clinic, Istanbul, Turkey 2 Department of General Surgery, Yuzuncu Yil University Medical Faculty, Van, Turkey 3 Department of Biochemistry, Istanbul University Cerrahpasa Medical Faculty, Istanbul, Turkey 4 Department of Biostatistics, Istanbul University Medical Faculty, Istanbul, Turkey 5 Department of Radiology, Yuzuncu Yil University Medical Faculty, Van, Turkey Correspondence should be addressed to ¨ Ozg¨ ur Kemik; ozgurkemik@hotmail.com Received 9 August 2014; Revised 26 October 2014; Accepted 27 October 2014; Published 13 November 2014 Academic Editor: Marco E. M. Peluso Copyright © 2014 ¨ Ozg¨ ur Bostancı et al. Tis 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. Background. Screening for biochemical markers is important for diagnosing colon cancer. In this study, the reliability of serum mesothelin levels as a potential diagnostic and screening instrument was evaluated concerning colon cancer. Methods. Ninety-fve patients who had undergone colonoscopic examination and who were diagnosed with colon cancer were included in the study. Te serum mesothelin levels were measured with the ELISA kits and were evaluated in terms of signifcant diference when compared between colon cancer and control group. Results. Patients with colon cancer had signifcantly higher mesothelin serum levels ( < 0.001) than the control groups. We found signifcant associations between serum levels and tumor grade, perineural invasion, and vascular invasion (resp.,  < 0.001). Conclusion. Evaluating the serum levels of mesothelin has a potential to detect and screen the colon cancer in afected patients. Our data suggest that mesothelin exhibits efects towards colon cancer and serves as a biomarker for this deadly disease. 1. Introduction Colon cancer is one of the most common malignancies worldwide and represents a global health problem [1]. Te pathogenesis of colon cancer generally consists of a staged progression from normal colonic mucosa to adenoma and fnally to carcinoma over a period of 7–10 years [2, 3]. Tis consecutive progression over time allows for early recognition and treatment. Late diagnosis is ofen blamed for a poor prognosis [4]. Te classical noninvasive and invasive methods of screen- ing modalities involve occult blood in stool testing, fecal immunochemical testing, double-contrast barium enema, fexible sigmoidoscopy, and colonoscopy [5]. Although some of these screening modalities have been reported to reduce the rate of malignancy or mortality, cancer-related mortality can be reduced by dissolving premalignant adenomas and early localized cancer prior to the development of more advanced stages. Terefore, it is necessary to efectively per- form early screening, recognition, and follow-up monitoring of colon cancer. Over the last few years, a focus of research has been on serum tumor markers. Studying “mesothelin” has been attempted in various malignancies [6–11], but there is one particularly important study on this topic in the literature [12]. Mesothelin is a 40 kDa cell surface glycoprotein. Te mesothelin gene is located on chromosome 16p13.3 and encodes at least four protein products, including megakary- ocyte potentiating factor (MPF) [13, 14] and three isoforms of mesothelin, which are variant 1 (mesothelin) [14], the currently uncharacterized variant 2 [15, 16], and variant 3 (soluble-mesothelin-related protein (SMRP)) [17]. MPF is a 31 kDa secreted cytokine-like protein that stimulates colony formation of mouse bone marrow cells in Hindawi Publishing Corporation Disease Markers Volume 2014, Article ID 161954, 5 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/161954