Expression of mRNA CD16A, CD16B, ICAM1, CD38, FOXP3 in tumor tissue of patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma

Diagnosis of kidney cancer presents significant difficulties, since symptoms of the disease may appear only at an advanced stage. Special attention is paid to the search for biomarkers that allow for rapid and effective tumor diagnosis and disease prognosis, including detection of mRNAs expressed by genes regulating the immune response. The aim of present study was to evaluate expression of CD16A, CD16B, ICAM1, CD38, FoxP3 mRNAs in tumor samples of the patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma. The study included 400 patients aged 45-68 years with histologically confirmed clear cell renal cell carcinoma, mainly at stage I-II (73%, 292/400), grade 2 (57.3% of observations, 229/400). Most patients underwent radical nephrectomy (279/400, 69.8%). All patients have signed an informed consent before the study. Tumor tissue samples (3 mm3) were collected on the day of surgery. The mRNA was obtained from tumor samples, and detected by real-time reverse transcription-PCR technique, being calculated in arbitrary units. The ubiquitin ligase C (UBC) gene was used as a housekeeping gene and positive control. Statistical processing of the results was performed using Statistica v.10.0 and MS Excel 2010. The most frequently expressed mRNAs in the tumor tissue were as follows: CD16A (100%); CD38 mRNA (93.3%, 280/300); CD16B mRNA (92%, 276/300), and the least frequently detected mRNA was FoxP3 (56%, 168/300). The detection rate of ICAM1 mRNA was 84.7% (254/300). The revealed differences in mRNA detection still persisted when comparing expression of distinct mRNAs in patients with different size of primary lesion, according to the TNM classification, different stages of the disease, its prognosis, degree of tumor malignancy and different outcomes of the disease. The frequency of FoxP3 mRNA detection was increased in patients with stage IV tumors, but it remained lower than the frequency of CD16A, CD16B, ICAM1, CD38 mRNA detection. In malignant tissues of patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma, we have found a highly frequent detection of mRNAs for CD16A, CD16B, CD38, along with low expression of FoxP3 mRNA, regardless of nunerous clinical and morphological predictors of the disease prognosis.

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