POSTN and cancer: A previous study has shown that Postn expression in cancer cells promotes metastasis of CRC, by activating the PI3 kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (Akt) signaling pathway, which supported our results that showed that Mkp-1 may influence tumor progression and metastasis [54, 55] through regulation of Postn expression; Postn could also be used as a prognostic and predictive factor for CRC [54].