MMP3 and colorectal cancer: To independently confirm the translational bridge between our findings and the pathogenesis of colitis/CAC in humans, expression of core genes (acute colitis: C3, Tyrobp, Mmp3, Mmp9, Timp1; CAC: Timp1, Mmp7, Mmp13, Adam8) was further evaluated in the transcriptomics profiles of colon tissue from patients with UC and CD collected from GEO (Figure 5A) and colorectal cancer retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (Figure 5B).