The most upregulated mRNAs in CRC according to our cohort includes MMP3, CLDN2, S100P, and KRT17. In a recent study on colon adenocarcinoma (COAD), the most common type of CRC, Zeng and colleagues looked into transcriptome data from the TCGA COAD dataset and identified MMP3, in addition to several other genes, as prognostic factors for patients with COAD21 with functional studies showing improved viability of colon cancer cell lines and decreased apoptosis rate22. Here, CLDN2 is linked to colonic neoplasm.