Affiliations: [a] Oncopathology Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran | [b] Department of Pathology, Anatomy & Cell Biology, Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center, Thomas Jefferson University, Philadelphia, PA, USA | [c] Department of Molecular Medicine, Faculty of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran | [d] Hasheminejad Kidney Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Tehran, Iran
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Leili Saeednejad Zanjani, Oncopathology Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS), Hemmat Street (Highway), Next to Milad Tower, Tehran 14496-14535, Iran. Tel.: +98 9123836251; Fax: +98 2188622608; E-mail: saeednejad.l@iums.ac.ir.
Note: [1] Leili Saeednejad Zanjani and Somayeh Vafaei contributed equally to this work and are joint first authors.
Abstract: METHODS: Talin-1 protein was demonstrated as a potential prognostic marker in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) using bioinformatics analysis. We, therefore, examined the protein expression levels and prognostic significance of Talin-1 with a clinical follow-up in a total of 269 tissue specimens from three important subtypes of RCC and 30 adjacent normal samples using immunohistochemistry. Then, we used combined analysis with B7-H3 to investigate higher prognostic values. RESULTS: The results showed that high membranous and cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1 was significantly associated with advanced nucleolar grade, microvascular invasion, histological tumor necrosis, and invasion to Gerota’s fascia in clear cell RCC (ccRCC). In addition, high membranous and cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1 was found to be associated with significantly poorer disease-specific survival (DSS) and progression-free survival (PFS). Moreover, increased cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1High/B7-H3High compared to the other phenotypes was associated with tumor aggressiveness and progression of the disease, and predicted a worse clinical outcome, which may be an effective biomarker to identify ccRCC patients at high risk of recurrence and metastasis. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, these observations indicate that Talin-1 is an important molecule involved in the spread and progression of ccRCC when expressed particularly in the cytoplasm and may serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in this subtype. Furthermore, a combined analysis of Talin-1/B7-H3 indicated an effective biomarker to predict the progression of disease and prognosis in ccRCC.
