Clinicopathological Significance of MTUS1 Expression in Patients With Renal Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Background/aim: Microtubule-associated tumor suppressor 1 (MTUS1) is a novel tumor suppressor involved in proliferation and migration, and down-regulation of MTUS1 is associated with the poor prognosis of several cancers. We evaluated the clinicopathological significance of MTUS1 expression in renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Patients and methods: We assessed MTUS1 expression by immunohistochemical staining of tissue microarrays from 249 cases of RCC. We analyzed the correlation of MTUS1 expression and clinicopathological characteristics. Additionally, we used public databases and performed bioinformatics analysis.

Results: We investigated The Cancer Genome Atlas databases and identified that MTUS1 mRNA expression was significantly lower in RCC tissues than in normal tissues. Loss of MTUS1 expression was correlated with high WHO/ISUP nuclear grade, lymphovascular invasion, renal vein thrombus, and high pT stage in patients with RCC. Although there was no statistically significant correlation between MTUS1 expression and patients' prognosis in our cohort, MTUS1 overexpression was significantly correlated with a favorable prognosis in public data.

Conclusion: Loss of MTUS1 expression in RCC might be a potential biomarker for predicting clinical outcome.

Keywords: MTUS1; immunohistochemistry; prognosis; public data; renal cell carcinoma.