Further study showed that REG4 expression was associated with lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, metastatic recurrence in the liver, advanced TNM stage, histologic grade, and MMP-7 expression in colorectal cancer (Oue et al., 2007; Zhu et al., 2015). Here, REG4 is linked to metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.