SLC38A2 and colon adenocarcinoma: Therefore, to establish the expression pattern of AATs as biomarkers for CRCs, firstly, we found significant upregulation of these AATs (SLC1A5/ASCT2, SLC7A5/LAT1, and SLC38A2/SNAT2) in CRC patient tissues (n = 286) as compared to normal tissue samples (n = 41) using TCGA colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) gene expression dataset from the UALCAN database (Fig. 7A–C).