In order to examine the potential role of ER stress in colorectal cancer we determined the expression of the ER stress proteins calreticulin (Fig. 1b), calnexin (Fig. 1c), GRP78 (Fig. 1d) and GRP94 (Fig. 1e) in colorectal tumour and matched normal tissue from patients with Stage II (n = 8) and Stage III (n = 15) disease (Additional file 1: Table S1). Here, HSPA5 is linked to colorectal cancer.