Dissecting the Implications of Calumenin in Malignancy and Heterogeneity of the Microenvironment of Clear Cell Renal...

Increasing evidence indicates that Calumenin (CALU), which is localized in the endoplasmic reticulum, is significantly associated with tumor progression. However, the effect of CALU on patients with clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is unknown. By integrating multi-omics data and molecular biology experiments, we found that CALU expression was significantly increased in tumors compared with normal tissues, and the pathological grade and prognosis of patients were correlated with CALU expression. Next, knockdown or ectopic expression of CALU could affect the proliferative and invasive abilities of ccRCC cells. Moreover, immune landscape characterization revealed that CALU expression was positively associated with neutrophils and macrophages, whereas it was negatively associated with natural killer T cells and CD8⁺ T cells. Single-cell sequencing showed that the localization and binding targets of CALU mainly involved monocytes/macrophages and CD4⁺ and CD8⁺ T-cells. Sensitivity analysis of common chemotherapeutic drugs showed that high expression of CALU could sensitize chemotherapeutic drugs such as 5Z-7-Oxozeaenol, AMG-706 and Cytarabine, but could lead to drug resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs such as Embelin, Salubrinal and Tipifarnib. We demonstrated a significant correlation between high CALU expression and poor patient survival. Further, we demonstrated a correlation between CALU expression, tumor microenvironment, and the sensitivity of patients to common chemo- and immuno-therapy drugs. Thus, our results indicate that CALU could be a biomarker and designing personalized treatment approaches for ccRCC patients.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s43657-024-00169-7.