Expression of ROR1 in patients with renal cancer--a potential diagnostic marker

The ectopic expression of receptor tyrosine kinase Ror1 has been reported in patients with hematological malignancies such as chronic lymphocytic leukemia and acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Here we report, for the first time, expression of ROR1 gene in both tumor tissues and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from patients with renal cancer (RC).

In the current study, the expression of ROR1 gene was semi-quantitatively measured in PBMC and tumor tissues from 16 RC patients as well as PBMC from 22 healthy individuals relative to the expression of the housekeeping gene phosphoglucomutase 1 by RT-PCR.

Our results showed that ROR1 was expressed at gene level in 81.3 percent of renal tumor tissues (13 out of 16) whereas it was expressed in 94 percent of PBMC from RC patients (15 out of 16). A weak expression of ROR1 was observed in PBMC of 4 out of 22 healthy individual. A significant expression of ROR1 was observed in PBMC from RC patients when compared to that in PBMC from normal healthy individuals (P less than 0.001). The expression of ROR1 in PBMC may reflect a shedding of tumor cells into blood stream.

We conclude that detection of a high level of ROR1 expression in blood cells might assist in early detection of renal malignancies, providing taking into consideration the clinical symptoms of the disease.