Consistent with previous observations that antagonists of BMPs promote cancer cell proliferation and inhibit apoptosis [9, 23, 24, 26, 54, 55, 57–59], our data showed that CHRDL2 inhibited apoptosis induction by BMP2 in HCT116 cells, furthermore, our study revealed that CHRDL2 enhanced proliferation of CRC cell by upregulating Cyclin D1 and downregulating P21. This evidence concerns the gene CLN5 and cancer.