Our results showed that BMP5 expression was negative in 31.0% (40 of 129) of the sCRC tumor cases while 10.1% (13 of 129) of the normal tissues (Chi-Square tests P < 0.0001, Fig. 2a and Table 2), and BMP5 expression showed no correlation to age, sex and clinical grade of 129 colorectal adenocarcinomas (Additional file 1: Table S12). Here, BMP5 is linked to neoplasm.