Wang Che, Zhou Yaoyang, Liang Yu, Pan Jue, Qiao Jinyu, Chen Lingbo, Liu Silin, Chen Jie, Wang Jin, Sun Xiao, Ma Jinlu, Cai Mengjiao
Department of Radiotherapy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi, 710061, People's Republic of China.
Department of Medical and Pharmaceutical Informatics, Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050017, People's Republic of China.
Onco Targets Ther. 2025 Sep 20;18:1069-1081. doi: 10.2147/OTT.S512698. eCollection 2025.
To observe the effect of vitamin C on Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) and investigate its mechanism.
Firstly, 29 vitamin C direct target proteins (DPTs) were identified by Drug Bank 5.0, and the protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and signaling pathways of vitamin C DPTs were analyzed. The results showed that vitamin C was not only related to KIRC, but also to the HIF-1 pathway. Meanwhile, the top 300 highly expressed genes of KIRC were obtained by GEPIA. Next, We compared the genes of four vitamin C targets in the PPI network with highly expressed genes in KIRC. Interestingly, these common genes are also involved in HIF-1 pathway. Additionally, we utilized RNA-Seq technology to explore the differentially expressed genes in KIRC with vitamin C compared to those not intervened. We observed that these differentially expressed genes exhibited a close association with hypoxia. Finally, we observed the inhibitory effect of Vitamin C on KIRC by Cell Counting Kit-8 (CCK8) assay, real-time quantitative PCR, Western blotting, flow cytometry, and colony formation assay, and confirmed that Vitamin C inhibits the growth of KIRC cells through the HIF-1 pathway.
Through bioinformatics analyses, we identified the molecular mechanism of vitamin C's role in KIRC and verified it through a series of experiments. Combined bioinformatics analysis will play an important role in future drug-disease interaction studies.
