CDCA2 and colorectal carcinoma: To explore the possible mechanism by which CDCA2 influences the proliferation of CRC cells, we determined the CDCA2 expression from TCGA via gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) [13] and found that CDCA2 expression levels were positively correlated with cell proliferation by affecting genes in the cell cycle phase transition, especially in G1-S phase transition (Fig. 4a).