Introduction: Survivin (also known as birc5) is the first protein discovered among the apoptosis-regulating gene family referred to as inhibitor of apoptosis proteins (IAPs). It is expressed and controlled during cellular differentiation and development in human beings. Survivin expression has been shown in a number of cancers and has been associated with cancer development.
Objective: In our study, we compared with blood samples as our control and normal- tumoural tissue samples, which obtained from the same tissue of 100 cases diagnosed with colorectal cancer, at Department of Pathology, Istanbul University.
Methods: The present study employed PCR-RFLP to identify the -31 G/C polymorphism in the promoter region of the survivin gene. Distribution of the survivin polymorphism was compared between control and tumoural tissue samples using the chi-square test.
Results: Comparison of all samples revealed that there was significant difference in distribution of survivin promoter -31G/C between control group and tumour and normal tissue of the patient group (p<0.05). When genotypes of the control and tumour tissues were compared according to gender, there was no statistically significant difference in the distribution of survivin promoter -31G/C in females p=0.420 or males p=0.309.
Conclusion: A significant difference was seen in distribution of C allele in tumour tissue compared to normal tissue.