ILK and cancer: It has been established for about two decades that ILK overexpression and dysregulation are associated with development and progression of different cancers, including CRC (Marotta et al., 2003; Hannigan et al., 2005; Koul et al., 2005; Bravou et al., 2006; Edwards et al., 2008; Assi and Salh, 2011; Assi et al., 2011a; Matsui et al., 2012; Sikkema et al., 2014; Yan et al., 2014; Tsoumas et al., 2018).