BACKGROUND

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a highly vascular tumor and patients with low risk metastatic RCC of clear-cell histological sub-type (mccRCC) are treated with tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs), sunitinib, as the first-line of treatment. Unfortunately, TKI resistance eventually develops, and the underlying molecular mechanism is not well understood.

METHODS

RCC cell-line with metastatic clear-cell histology (Caki-1), and patient samples were analysed to identify the role of Y-box binding protein 1 (YB-1) and ATP-binding cassette sub-family B member 1 (ABCB-1) in acquired sunitinib-resistance development. Caki-1 was conditioned with increasing sunitinib doses to recapitulate acquired resistance development in clinics. Sunitinib-conditioned and wild-type Caki-1 were subjected to cell viability assay, scratch assay, chicken embryo chorioallantoic membrane engraftment and proteomics analysis. Classical biochemical assays like flow cytometry, immunofluorescent staining, immunohistochemical staining, optical coherence tomography imaging, Western Blot and RT-PCR assays were applied to determine the possible mechanism of sunitinib-resistance development and the effect of drug treatments. Publicly available data was also used to determine the role of YB-1 upregulation in ccRCC and the patients' overall survival.

RESULTS

We demonstrate that YB-1 and ABCB-1 are upregulated in sunitinib-resistant in vitro, ex vivo, in vivo and patient samples compared to the sensitive samples. This provides evidence to a mechanism of acquired sunitinib-resistance development in mccRCC. Furthermore, our results establish that inhibiting ABCB-1 with elacridar, in addition to sunitinib, has a positive impact on reverting sunitinib-resistance development in in vitro, ex vivo and in vivo models.

CONCLUSION

This work proposes a targeted therapy (elacridar and sunitinib) to re-sensitize sunitinib-resistant mccRCC and, possibly, slow disease progression.