Background
The incidence of RCC is increasing annually by about 2% [
1]. Over 200 000 new cases are diagnosed per year and more than 100 000 related deaths occur globally [
2]. RCC is marked by adverse tumour biology and its CSS ranks lowest among urological malignancies [
3]. RCC is clinically demanding due to its prognostic heterogeneity. The establishment of concepts of adjuvant therapy has been hindered by lacking reliability of prediction of outcome by both clinical and molecular parameters. Therefore, identification of novel markers is warranted for tailoring therapy and follow-up. One current approach for molecular tumour characterization is profiling of microRNA (miR) expression [
4]. MiRs are small noncoding RNA strands posttranscriptionally regulating gene expression and appearing to be modulators of urologic cancers [
5]. Among the large number of miRs, miR-21 and miR-126 have received special attention because of their relationship with multiple cancer entities. Upregulation of miR-21 has been reported e.g. in breast, gastric and lung cancer [
4]. A respective role has also been suggested for urological malignancies. In prostate cancer, elevated expression of miR-21 alone was shown to convey castration resistance [
6]. In RCC, several studies describe upregulation of miR-21 [
7,
8] and recently, association with reduced survival [
9], indicating a pathogenetical role of miR-21 as a so-called oncomiR.
Such role has also been suggested for miRNA-126, which is mapped within its host gene EGFL-7 (epidermal growth factor like-7) and is highly expressed in vascular endothelial cells [
10]. By regulating the VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) pathway miR-126 plays an important role in angiogenesis, lymphangiogenesis and vessel integrity in endothelial cells as well as in cancer cells [
11]. In several studies miR-126 was reported to act as a tumour suppressor and was shown to be downregulated in various cancer types including breast, gastric, prostate cancer and RCC [
11,
12]. In non-small cell lung and oral squamous cell cancer downregulation of miR-126 was related to poor survival suggesting miR-126 to be prognostic [
13,
14]. In metastatic colorectal cancer miR-126 was related to the response of treatment with capecitabine and oxaliplatin [
15]. In RCC miR-126 is described to play a role in molecular classification of different subtypes [
12] and recently, association of downregulation with progression was supposed [
16,
17].
While dysregulation of miR-21 and miR-126 has been linked to metastasis and progression in many cancer types, to date data on RCC are scarce. To assess a potential role of these miRs as prognostic molecular markers in RCC we analysed the expression of both miRs in 139 clear cell RCC specimens aiming at clinical application as molecular markers.
Discussion
Clinical management of RCC has changed in recent years with increased incidental diagnosis and by initiating therapy in localized stages and the establishment of antiangiogenic agents. While tumour size at time of diagnosis has decreased, mortality rate for RCC has not, suggesting an impact of differential tumour biology in morphologically similar tumours [
20]. Therefore, identification of patients at high risk for cancer progression is warranted to tailor adjuvant treatment.
While numerous articles have recently studied associations between miRs and carcinogenesis and tumour progression proposing several so-called oncomiRs as regulators in carcinogenetic pathways and biomarkers in many cancer entities, considerably fewer data are available on such roles of specific miRs in RCC. Whereas recent expression studies in metastatic or progressive RCC revealed a large number of different miRs potentially linked to progression [
16,
21‐
24], surprisingly only a small number of miRs have been found to be concordantly differentially expressed in metastasised or progressive RCC. The small overlap between the different studies and largely contradictory results remains to be explained. Therefore, we selected the oncomiRs, miR-21 and miR-126, based on literature search and own unpublished expression analyses as promising markers for CSS in RCC. As expected, we identified differential expression of miR-21 in our RCC study cohort, but, surprisingly, we could not find changes in the overall miR-126 expression in our study cohort. However, miR-126 was highly up or down-regulated in subgroups of the study collective, balancing the expression changes of miR-126 in the total RCC collective. Nevertheless, the dysregulation of miR-126 in subgroups of the RCC collective might indicate a role of miR-126 dysregulation in the development of RCC. This suggestion is supported by previous studies describing an impact of miR-126 in molecular classification of different RCC subtypes [
12,
16,
17].
Among oncogenetic miRNAs, miR-21 may be one of the most attractive for clinical use. MiR-21 is upregulated in various human cancers [
4,
6,
25]. In vitro data support such notion; cell lines with miR-21 overexpression increase cell proliferation, migration and invasion [
26]. Zhang et al. showed that knockdown of miR-21 inhibited cell proliferation and induced cell apoptosis by targeting multiple genes in RCC cells [
27]. Association of miR-21 expression with adverse outcome was reported for various cancer entities, such as breast and gastric cancer [
4]. Such results recently also have been reported by two previous studies using smaller RCC study cohorts [
7,
9]. Our present results stemming from a considerably larger and unselected series representative of tertiary cancer care are in line with these data demonstrating marked upregulation of miR-21 in RCC and significant association with synchronous metastasis and CSS. Our results show miR-21 to be an independent predictor. In one of the two previous and smaller studies in RCC Faragalla et al. found miR-21 upregulation to be associated with CSS, although it was not independent of tumour stage and grade. While Faragalla used relative miR-21 expression levels, in the present study levels of the RCC samples were normalized to adjacent benign tissue. Thus, the present study is the first to date that identifies miR-21 as an independent marker for CSS in a large and representative series using such normalization mode.
Recently miR-126 has been reported to be a tumour suppressor in various cancer types including RCC [
16,
17] regulating target genes like CRK, VEGF and EGFL7 in cancer cells [
11]. Lately, regulation of pro-angiogenic genes has been demonstrated in metastatic breast cancer [
28]. Inhibition of apoptosis in leukaemia and promotion of cancer development in NSCLC or prostate cancer have also been reported [
11,
29]. In several miR expression studies downregulation of miR-126 was associated with metastatic disease and early relapse after nephrectomy in smaller series of RCC [
16,
17]. The present series is the largest assessing miR-126 as prognostic factor in RCC to date and the first analysing expression levels normalized with benign tissue. Finding no overall downregulation of miR-126 expression we conclude no pivotal role in the initiation of RCC. Downregulation was significantly related to synchronous metastasis and independently predicted CSS. The predominant downregulation of miR-126 in progressive RCC suggest miR-126 to act as a tumour suppressor, which is supported by the recent description of miR-126 regulating VEGF-A in RCC [
16], one of the pivotal factors of angiogenesis and tumour progression.
Currently, no clinically applicable molecular marker of CSS is available in RCC. To develop an accurate prediction system, we generated a dual-factorial marker model based on a CRS using the expression levels of miR-21 and miR-126. The determined CRS provided higher sensitivity and specificity compared to risk stratification, which was based on expression of each single miR. The CRS is associated with disease prognosis and predicts CSS independently from other clinicopathological factors in the analysed RCC cohort. Validation in an independent study cohort has shown that the CRS is able to classify robustly RCC samples into relevant risk groups with high sensitivity and specificity suggesting that it might have potential as a prognostic molecular assay in a clinical setting. However, the current validation is limited by various factors, like size of the validation cohort or applicability of qRT-PCR based expression analysis in clinical routine. To further test the effectiveness of this molecular marker model, we are planning to evaluate it on expanded validation cohorts in the future. Recently, a miR signature based on the expression of miR-10b, miR-139, miR-130b and miR-199b was found to be associated with synchronous metastasis and CSS in RCC [
30] providing similar sensitivity (76%) and specificity (100%) as our study. Although no direct comparison can be made and the present series is considerably larger and assessed two miRs, the 5-year CSS rates predicted by both miR signatures of 32% and 84% for the high and low risk cases in the 4-miR signature compared with 48% and 96% in the current study support the robustness of such models and the impact of certain miRs on RCC. Several studies have evaluated the prognostic value of clinico-pathological features like performance status, metastatic status, lymph node involvement, sarcomatoid features, perinephritic fat invasion, Fuhrman grade and histological subtype in RCC patients [
31]. We have found that only tumour grade independently predicts survival in our study cohort. Tumour stage, sex or age of the patients did not significantly correlate with prognosis and survival in our regression model. This might depend on the limited sample size and follow-up time of our RCC collective and has to be further validated in larger cohorts.
Also certain additional limitations of the present analysis need to be taken into account. For one, only clear-cell RCC was assessed limiting our conclusions to this entity. Since it represents the largest and clinically most relevant subtype, however, the clinical significance of our data is not diminished and inclusion of clear-cell RCC only added to the homogeneity of the data. Secondly, while the present series is among the largest reported to date and mode of diagnosis, surgical treatment and pathological processing are homogeneous, the data acquisition was retrospective and the exact use and regimens of anti-angiogenic medication and its impact on CSS could not be assessed. The overall use of antiangiogenic medication was homogeneously distributed over the study group and among cases with differential miR expression limiting respective bias. A further limitation is the lack of functional data; such was not the focus of the present study however, since we aimed at establishing clinical evaluation of miR as prognostic tools rather than adding basic knowledge on the role of miR in RCC tumorbiology.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Authors’ contributions
All authors contributed to the conception and design of the study. DV conceived of this study and contributed data acquisition and interpretation, as well as drafting the manuscript. CS performed the data evaluation. SK performed the statistical analysis and helped to draft the manuscript. AR, MS, MB and HR contributed critical revision of the manuscript for scientific and factual content. BK supervised the study and guided in analysing and interpretation of the data as well as drafting the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.