Exploration of Immunology

Table 1. Baseline characteristics of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients and healthy controls included in the discovery-phase proteomics study.

Group	N	Age, mean (range)	Sex (male/female)	Comorbidities/Medications	Ethnicity	Treatment status	Clinical tumor, nodes, and metastasis (cTNM), mean (SD), ranges	Pathological staging, ranges	Final anatomic stage, ranges
Stage I CRC	1	70 (–)	1/0	No major comorbidities reported	Asian	Pre-treatment	cT1N0M0–cT4N2M1	pT1bN0–pT4aN2b	I–IV
Stage II CRC	4	67 (55–80)	2/2	Limited records; no major systemic illness
Stage III CRC	4	58 (52–67)	4/0	No comorbidities recorded
Stage IV CRC	3	46 (35–60)	1/2	Limited records
All CRC patients	12	59.6 (35–80)	8/4	Overall, no major systemic illness was reported
Healthy controls	3	66.7 (62–70)	1/2	No comorbidities

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Statistical comparison: age difference between CRC patients and controls was not significant (t-test, p = 0.075). Sex distribution did not differ significantly between groups (chi-square test, p = 0.41). Comorbidity information was limited; available records did not indicate major systemic illness or medications affecting metabolic/immune function.

Supplementary materials

Other supplementary material for this article is available at: https://www.explorationpub.com/uploads/Article/file/1003252_sup_1.pdf.

Declarations

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Mrs. J.S.Sakkthi Prabha for formatting and proofreading the manuscript.

Author contributions

RA: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Writing—original draft. VB, SK, JR, and RS: Writing—review & editing, Funding acquisition, Resources. All authors read and approved the submitted version.

Conflicts of interest

The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

Ethical approval

The study was approved by the AVMC Institutional Human Ethics Committee (IHEC) under protocol No. AVMC-2021-04-14. The study was conducted in accordance with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki (2024 revision).

Consent to participate

Written informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to sample collection.

Consent to publication

Not applicable.

Availability of data and materials

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this manuscript will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

Funding

Seed funding support to conduct this research (VMRF/Research/Seed Money/30th April, 2021) was provided by VMRF. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

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Open Exploration maintains a neutral stance on jurisdictional claims in published institutional affiliations and maps. All opinions expressed in this article are the personal views of the author(s) and do not represent the stance of the editorial team or the publisher.

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