Prognosis markers for metastatic renal cell carcinoma: quantitative proteomics approach

Renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) are a heterogeneous group of tumors, that are associated with a high potential of metastases. In the last decade proteomic technologies have been used in RCC research to improve the discovery of early diagnosis and prognosis markers. To investigate the potential of metastasizing RCC, Masui et al. performed differential quantitative proteomics using isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation and compared the protein expression profile from metastatic RCCs to primary RCC. The authors could identify 29 proteins with different expression behaviors between the compared groups. Furthermore, with the help of hierarchical clustering, the authors could even establish a protein expression pattern that discriminates aggressive from nonaggressive RCC. A preliminary validation highlighted three potential prognosis markers Pfn1, 14-3-3ζ and Gal-1, increased expression of which correlated with poor outcomes. The authors concluded that a better understanding of the pathomechanisms underlying the expression changes of the identified proteins could deliver new insights into the therapy of metastatic RCC.