High Cytoplasmic and Membranous Versus Nuclear Talin-1 Expression Associated With Malignancy Potential and Poor Survival in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Using bioinformatics analysis Talin-1 protein was indicated as a potential prognostic focal adhesion factor in renal cell carcinoma (RCC). We, therefore, examined its protein expression levels and prognostic significant of Talin-1 with clinical follow-up in total of 269 tissue specimens from three important subtypes of RCC and 30 adjacent normal samples using tissue microarrays (TMAs). Then, we used combined analysis with B7-H3 to confirm that Talin-1 may be related to metastasis. The results showed that high membranous and cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1 was significantly associated with advanced nucleolar grade (P < 0.001, all), microvascular invasion (P = 0.007, P = 0.004, respectively), histological tumor necrosis (P = 0.020, P = 0.018), and invasion to Gerota’s fascia (P = 0.025, P = 0.050) in ccRCC. In addition, high membranous and cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1 was associated with significantly poorer disease-specific survival (P = 0.043, P = 0.024, respectively) and progression- free survival (P = 0.046, in cytoplasm). Moreover, increased cytoplasmic expression of Talin-1 High/B7-H3 High compared to the other phenotypes was associated with poor prognosis and progression of the disease in patients with distant metastasis. Collectively, these observations indicate that Talin-1 is an important molecule involved in the spread and progression of ccRCC when expressed particularly in cytoplasm and may serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in this subtype.