KRAS and neoplasm: Clinicopathologically, compared with EPCAM-intact tumors, EPCAM-PL tumors were significantly associated with advanced stage (stage III/IV) (P = 0.001), lymph node metastasis (pN1/pN2) (P = 0.002), distant metastasis (P = 0.001), poor differentiation (P < 0.001), signet ring cell histology (P < 0.001), lymphovascular invasion (P = 0.01), perineural invasion (P = 0.02), tumor budding (P < 0.001), CIMP-high (P = 0.008), MLH1 promoter methylation (P = 0.01), and wild-type KRAS (P = 0.01) in MSI-high CRCs (Table 1).