Identification of adhesion-associated extracellular matrix component thrombospondin 3 as a prognostic signature for clear cell renal cell carcinoma.

PURPOSE

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is a highly aggressive disease, and approximately 30% of patients are diagnosed at the metastatic stage. Even with targeted therapies, the prognosis of advanced ccRCC is poor. The aim of this study was to investigate clinical prognosis signatures by analyzing the ccRCC datasets in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC) and the function of thrombospondin 3 () in ccRCC.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

We analyzed the ccRCC datasets in TCGA and CPTAC to search for extracellular matrix (ECM)-related and adhesion-associated genes, and conducted overall survival, Cox, and receiver operating characteristic analyses. We also performed CCK8, colony formation, and transwell assays to compared the proliferation and migration ability of knockout cells with those of cells without knockout.

RESULTS

Comprehensive bioinformatics analysis revealed that is a novel candidate oncogene that is overexpressed in ccRCC tumor tissue and that its elevated expression indicates poor prognosis. Our study also showed that knockdown of inhibits proliferation, colony formation, and migration of ccRCC cells.

CONCLUSIONS

In summary, our data have revealed that is upregulated in cancer tissues and could be used as a novel prognostic marker for ccRCC. Our findings thus offer theoretical support with bioinformatics analyses to the study of ECM and adhesion proteins in ccRCC, which may provide a new perspective for the clinical management of ccRCC.