Abstract. Primary renal lymphoma (PRL) is a rare disease, with no more than 70 cases reported in the literature. The present study reports the case of a 70-year-old woman with PRL. The patient was asymptomatic, however, a mass on the right kidney was identified incidentally during routine physical examination. Computed tomography revealed a mass in the right kidney that was 3.6 cm in diameter. Subsequently, right nephrectomy was performed. The histological evaluation of the nephrectomy specimen showed diffuse large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. The patient was treated with 6-8 cycles of a cyclophosphamide, epirubicin, vindesine and dexamethasone regimen. Follow-up examination performed after 2 months of treatment revealed no evidence of local recurrence. The present study also reviewed 49 cases of PRL that have been reported since 1989. It was found that a shorter survival time was experienced by patients with bilateral PRL (mean, 21 months) compared with unilateral PRL (mean, 68 months). A shorter survival time was also experienced by patients who were treated with chemotherapy only (mean, 15.8 months) compared with those who were treated with combination chemotherapy and surgery (mean, 49.4 months).

To investigate whether IL‐6 signaling affects the susceptibility of castration‐resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) cells to cytotoxic action of natural killer (NK) cells, CRPC cell lines (having different IL‐6 levels) were developed by lentiviral transduction. While observing no secreted IL‐6 level in parental C4‐2 and CWR22Rv1 cells, we found the IL‐6 expression/secretion in these cells was induced after the transduction process and the IL‐6 level difference in C4‐2siIL‐6/sc and CWR22siIL‐6/sc cell CRPC cell sets could be detected. We then found that IL‐6‐knockdown cells were more susceptible to NK cell cytotoxicity than control cells due to lowered programmed death receptor ligand 1 (PD‐L1) and increased NK group 2D (NKG2D) ligand levels. In animal studies, to concur with the in vitro results, we found that IL‐6‐expressing cell‐derived tumors were more resistant to NK cell action than the tumors of IL‐6‐knockdown cells. Further, we discovered that JAK‐Stat3 is the most critical IL‐6 downstream signaling that modulates PD‐L1/NKG2D ligand levels in CRPC cells. Furthermore, inhibition of the JAK or Stat3 signaling effectively increased the susceptibility of C4‐2sc and CWRsc cells to NK cell cytotoxicity. We observed the most effective cytotoxicity when the PD‐L1 Ab and JAK inhibitor (or Stat 3 inhibitor) were used together. These results suggest that the strategy of targeting IL‐6 signaling (or its downstream signaling) may enhance the NK cell‐mediated immune action to CRPC tumors, thus yielding clinical implications in developing future immunotherapeutics of exploiting this strategy to treat patients with CRPC.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small non-coding RNA molecules that serve an important function in carcinogenesis and tumor progression. The present study investigated the roles and mechanisms of miRNA-125b (miR-125b) in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). miR-125b was significantly downregulated in the examined HCC tissues and cell lines. Overexpression of miR-125b reduced HCC cell migration and invasion. By contrast, inhibition of miR-125b expression significantly accelerated HCC cell migration and invasion. In addition, the present study identified transcriptional coactivator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ) as a functional downstream target of miR-125b. Furthermore, overexpression of TAZ impaired miR-125b-induced inhibition of invasion in HCC cells. The current study demonstrated that miR-125b may be involved in the tumorigenesis of HCC at least in part by the suppression of TAZ.