scholarly journals UQCRH downregulation promotes Warburg effect in renal cell carcinoma cells

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanting Luo ◽  
Louise Medina Bengtsson ◽  
Xuechun Wang ◽  
Tianhe Huang ◽  
Guoqiang Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Ubiquinol-cytochrome c reductase hinge protein (UQCRH) is the hinge protein for the multi-subunit complex III of the mitochondrial electron transport chain and is involved in the electron transfer reaction between cytochrome c1 and c. Recent genome-wide transcriptomic and epigenomic profiling of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) identified UQCRH as the top-ranked gene showing inverse correlation between DNA hypermethylation and mRNA downregulation. The function and underlying mechanism of UQCRH in the Warburg effect metabolism of ccRCC have not been characterized. Here, we verified the clinical association of low UQCRH expression and shorter survival of ccRCC patients through in silico analysis and identified KMRC2 as a highly relevant ccRCC cell line that displays hypermethylation-induced UQCRH extinction. Ectopic overexpression of UQCRH in KMRC2 restored mitochondrial membrane potential, increased oxygen consumption, and attenuated the Warburg effect at the cellular level. UQCRH overexpression in KMRC2 induced higher apoptosis and slowed down in vitro and in vivo tumor growth. UQCRH knockout by CRISPR/Cas9 had little impact on the metabolism and proliferation of 786O ccRCC cell line, suggesting the dispensable role of UQCRH in cells that have entered a Warburg-like state through other mechanisms. Together, our study suggests that loss of UQCRH expression by hypermethylation may promote kidney carcinogenesis through exacerbating the functional decline of mitochondria thus reinforcing the Warburg effect.

PPAR Research ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Ruizhe Mao ◽  
Jian Shi ◽  
Xuyi Ma ◽  
Haiyan Xu

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the major pathological pattern of renal cell carcinoma. The ccRCC cells exhibit a certain degree of inherent drug resistance due to some genetic mutations. In recent years, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-α (PPARα) antagonists have been reported as a targeted therapeutic drug capable of inducing apoptosis and cell cycle arrest in the ccRCC cell line. Autophagy, which can be induced by stress in eukaryotic cells, plays a complex role in the proliferation, survival, and death of tumor cells. In our study, we found that the expression of PPARα was low in highly differentiated ccRCC tissues and 786-O cell line but high in poorly differentiated ccRCC tissues. The level of PPARα expression in ccRCC tissues is correlated to the grade of differentiation, but not to the sex or age of ccRCC patients. The findings also revealed that the PPARα antagonist GW6471 can lower cell viability and induce autophagy in the 786-O ccRCC cell line. This autophagy can be inhibited by hydroxychloroquine. When treated with a combination of hydroxychloroquine and GW6471, the viability of the 786-O cells was decreased further when compared to the treatment with GW6471 or hydroxychloroquine alone, and apoptosis was promoted. Meanwhile, when human kidney 2 cells were cotreated with hydroxychloroquine and GW6471, cell viability was only slightly influenced. Hence, our finding indicates that the combination of GW6471 and hydroxychloroquine may constitute a novel and potentially effective treatment for ccRCC. Furthermore, this approach is likely to be safe owing to its minimal effects on normal renal tissues.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 175883592097711
Author(s):  
Xia Ran ◽  
Jinyuan Xiao ◽  
Yi Zhang ◽  
Huajing Teng ◽  
Fang Cheng ◽  
...  

Background: Intratumor heterogeneity (ITH) has been shown to be inversely associated with immune infiltration in several cancers including clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), but it remains unclear whether ITH is associated with response to immunotherapy (e.g. PD-1 blockade) in ccRCC. Methods: We quantified ITH using mutant-allele tumor heterogeneity, investigated the association of ITH with immune parameters in patients with ccRCC ( n = 336) as well as those with papillary RCC (pRCC, n = 280) from The Cancer Genome Atlas, and validations were conducted in patients with ccRCC from an independent cohort ( n = 152). The relationship between ITH and response to anti-PD-1 immunotherapy was explored in patients with metastatic ccRCC from a clinical trial of anti-PD-1 therapy ( n = 35), and validated in three equal-size simulated data sets ( n = 60) generated by random sampling with replacement based on this clinical trial cohort. Results: In ccRCC, low ITH was associated with better survival, more reductions in tumor burden, and clinical benefit of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy through modulating immune activity involving more neoantigens, elevated expression of HLA class I genes, and higher abundance of dendritic cells. Furthermore, we found that the association between the level of ITH and response to PD-1 blockade was independent of the mutation status of PBRM1 and that integrating both factors performed better than the individual predictors in predicting the benefit of anti-PD-1 immunotherapy in ccRCC patients. In pRCC, increased immune activity was also observed in low- versus high-ITH tumors, including higher neoantigen counts, increased abundance of monocytes, and decreased expression of PD-L1 and PD-L2. Conclusions: ITH may be helpful in the identification of patients who could benefit from PD-1 blockade in ccRCC, and even in pRCC where no genomic metrics has been found to correlate with response to immune checkpoint inhibitors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kang Yang ◽  
Xiao-fan Lu ◽  
Peng-cheng Luo ◽  
Jie Zhang

Background. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC), the most common subtype of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), usually is representative of metastatic heterogeneous neoplasm that links with poor prognosis, but the pathogenesis of ccRCC remains unclear. Currently, numerous evidences prove that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are considered as competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) to participate in cellular processes of tumors. Therefore, to investigate the underlying mechanisms of ccRCC, the expression profiles of lncRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNAs were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. A total of 1526 differentially expressed lncRNAs (DElncRNAs), 54 DEmiRNAs, and 2352 DEmRNAs were identified. To determine the connection of them, all DElncRNAs were input to the miRcode database. The results indicated that 85 DElncRNAs could connect with 9 DEmiRNAs in relation to our study. Then, databases of TargetScan and miRDB were used to search for targeted genes with reference to DEmiRNAs. The results showed that 203 out of 2352 targeted genes were identified in our TCGA set. Subsequently, ceRNA network was constructed according to Cytoscape and the targeted genes were functionally analyzed to elucidate the mechanisms of DEmRNAs. The results of survival analysis and regression analysis indicated that 6 DElncRNAs named COL18A1-AS1, WT1-AS, LINC00443, TCL6, AL356356.1, and SLC25A5-AS1 were significantly correlative with the clinical traits of ccRCC patients and could be served as predictors for ccRCC. Finally, these findings were validated by quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR). Based on these discoveries, we believe that this identified ceRNA network will provide a novel perspective to elucidate ccRCC pathogenesis.


BMC Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Qianwei Xing ◽  
Tengyue Zeng ◽  
Shouyong Liu ◽  
Hong Cheng ◽  
Limin Ma ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The role of glycolysis in tumorigenesis has received increasing attention and multiple glycolysis-related genes (GRGs) have been proven to be associated with tumor metastasis. Hence, we aimed to construct a prognostic signature based on GRGs for clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) and to explore its relationships with immune infiltration. Methods Clinical information and RNA-sequencing data of ccRCC were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and ArrayExpress datasets. Key GRGs were finally selected through univariate COX, LASSO and multivariate COX regression analyses. External and internal verifications were further carried out to verify our established signature. Results Finally, 10 GRGs including ANKZF1, CD44, CHST6, HS6ST2, IDUA, KIF20A, NDST3, PLOD2, VCAN, FBP1 were selected out and utilized to establish a novel signature. Compared with the low-risk group, ccRCC patients in high-risk groups showed a lower overall survival (OS) rate (P = 5.548Ee-13) and its AUCs based on our established signature were all above 0.70. Univariate/multivariate Cox regression analyses further proved that this signature could serve as an independent prognostic factor (all P < 0.05). Moreover, prognostic nomograms were also created to find out the associations between the established signature, clinical factors and OS for ccRCC in both the TCGA and ArrayExpress cohorts. All results remained consistent after external and internal verification. Besides, nine out of 21 tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) were highly related to high- and low- risk ccRCC patients stratified by our established signature. Conclusions A novel signature based on 10 prognostic GRGs was successfully established and verified externally and internally for predicting OS of ccRCC, helping clinicians better and more intuitively predict patients’ survival.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang Ju ◽  
Yangyang Sun ◽  
Feng Zhang ◽  
Xiaohui Wei ◽  
Zhenguo Wang ◽  
...  

With the rapid development of biotechnology, long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have exhibited good application prospects in the treatment of cancer, and they may become new treatment targets for cancer. This study aimed to explore lncRNAs in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Differentially expressed lncRNAs in 54 pairs of ccRCC tissues and para-carcinoma tissues were analyzed in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the most significant lncRNAs were selected and verified in ccRCC tissues. We found that lncRNA LINC02747 was highly expressed in ccRCC (P &lt; 0.001) and was closely related to high TNM stage (P = 0.006) and histological grade (P = 0.004) and poor prognosis of patients (P &lt; 0.001). In vivo and in vitro experiments confirmed that LINC02747 could promote the proliferation of ccRCC cells. We also found that LINC02747 regulated the proliferation of RCC cells by adsorbing miR-608. Subsequent mechanistic research showed that miR-608 is downregulated in ccRCC (P &lt; 0.001), and overexpression of miR-608 inbibited the proliferation of RCC cells. Moreover, we found that TFE3 is a direct target gene of miR-608. MiR-608 regulated the proliferation of RCC cells by inhibiting TFE3. In conclusion, LINC02747 upregulates the expression of TFE3 by adsorbing miR-608, ultimately promoting the proliferation of ccRCC cells. The above findings indicate that LINC02747 acts as an oncogene in ccRCC and may be developed as a molecular marker for the diagnosis and prognosis of ccRCC. The LINC02747/miR-608/TFE3 pathway may become a new therapeutic target for ccRCC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-13
Author(s):  
Zhanxin Liu ◽  
Zichun Wang ◽  
Xiaoxiong Wang ◽  
Meisong Lu ◽  
Guang Chen

Several studies have indicated that HOXA transcript at the distal tip (HOTTIP) play important roles in the tumorigenesis and development of various cancers. We aim to investigate the expression and prognostic value of HOTTIP in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). A systematic review of PubMed, Embase, Medline, and Web of Science databases was performed to select eligible literatures relevant to the correlation between HOTTIP expression and clinical outcome of different cancers. The association between the HOTTIP level and overall survival (OS), lymph node metastasis (LNM), or clinical stage was subsequently analyzed. Survival analyses were performed in a large cohort of more than 500 patients with ccRCC from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) using bioinformatic methods. Seventeen studies with a total of 1594 patients with thirteen kinds of carcinomas were included in this analysis. The result showed that high HOTTIP expression could predict worse outcome in cancer patients, with the pooled hazard ratio (HR) of 2.34 (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.96–2.79, p<0.0001). The result also showed that elevated HOTTIP expression was correlated with more LNM (OR=2.61, 95% CI 1.91-3.58, p<0.0001) and advanced clinical stage (OR=3.57, 95% CI 2.58-4.93, p<0.0001). We further validated that ccRCC patients with higher HOTTIP expression tend to have unsatisfactory outcomes both in the entire TCGA dataset and different clinical stratums, like age, grade, and stage. The tumor of those patients was associated with a larger size, easier to metastasis, advanced clinical stage, and a higher pathological grade. These findings suggested that increased HOTTIP expression might act as a novel prognostic marker for ccRCC patients.


BMC Urology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanette E. Eckel-Passow ◽  
Huihuang Yan ◽  
Matthew L. Kosel ◽  
Daniel Serie ◽  
Paul A. Decker ◽  
...  

Abstract Background The four most commonly-mutated genes in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) tumors are BAP1, PBRM1, SETD2 and VHL. And, there are currently 14 known RCC germline variants that have been reproducibly shown to be associated with RCC risk. However, the association of germline genetics with tumor genetics and clinical aggressiveness are unknown. Methods We analyzed 420 ccRCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Molecular subtype was determined based on acquired mutations in BAP1, PBRM1, SETD2 and VHL. Aggressive subtype was defined clinically using Mayo SSIGN score and molecularly using the ccA/ccB gene expression subtype. Publically-available Hi-C data were used to link germline risk variants with candidate target genes. Results The 8q24 variant rs35252396 was significantly associated with VHL mutation status (OR = 1.6, p = 0.0037) and SSIGN score (OR = 1.9, p = 0.00094), after adjusting for multiple comparisons. We observed that, while some germline variants have interactions with nearby genes, some variants demonstrate long-range interactions with target genes. Conclusions These data further demonstrate the link between rs35252396, HIF pathway and ccRCC clinical aggressiveness, providing a more comprehensive picture of how germline genetics and tumor genetics interact with respect to tumor development and progression.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quan Hong ◽  
Shuqiang Wang ◽  
Shuxin Liu ◽  
Xiangmei Chen ◽  
Guangyan Cai

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) accounts for 60-70% of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cases. It is an urgent mission to find more therapeutic targets for advanced ccRCC. Leucine-rich a-2-glycoprotein 1 (LRG1) is a secreted protein associated with a variety of malignancies. Our study focused on the expression and mechanism of LRG1 in ccRCC based on data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and provided primary verification including LRG1 expression detection, LRG1 gene methylation detection, and downstream signaling detection. We found that LRG1 was overexpressed in ccRCC kidney tissue samples, and the methylation level of LRG1 gene was significantly decreased in ccRCC. Moreover, the expression of LRG1 was negatively related to patient survival. Based on our previous study and the verification reported in this article, we propose that demethylation-induced overexpression of LRG1 is likely to accelerate ccRCC progression via the TGF-β pathway.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document