Low Expression Indicates a Biomarker of Poor Prognosis in Patients with Renal Cell Carcinoma.

It was initially found that neural-restrictive silencer factor/repressor 1-silencing transcription factor () is a transcriptional repressor of neuronal genes in nonneuronal cells. However, it is reported to be abundantly expressed in various types of aggressive cancer cells. In this study, we evaluated the expression patterns of in renal cell carcinoma and found that its expression is lower in tumor tissues compared to normal tissues. The chi-square test showed that the low expression was closely related to patients' clinicopathologic parameters, including the pathologic stage and survival status. ROC curve showed that had excellent clinical diagnostic prospect. In addition, patients with low expression had poor over survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis confirmed that the low expression was an independent predictor of poor prognosis in renal cell carcinoma. Gene set enrichment analysis identified P53 pathway, reactive oxygen species pathway, glycolysis, DNA repair, cholesterol homeostasis, and MYC targets V2 enriched with low expression phenotype. These results suggested that may be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of renal cell carcinoma in clinical applications.