Background
In the clinic, how to stratify renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients with different risks and to accurately predict their prognostic outcome remains a crucial issue. In this study, we assessed the expression and prognostic value of gankyrin in RCC patients.
Methods
The expression of gankyrin was examined in public databases and validated in specimens from two independent centers. The clinical practice and disease correlation of gankyrin in RCC were evaluated in RCC patients, various cell lines and an orthotopic RCC model. Findings: Upregulation of gankyrin expression in RCC was corroborated in two independent cohorts. High gankyrin expression positively associated with disease progression and metastasis of RCC patients. A positive correlation between gankyrin and sunitinib-resistance was also observed in RCC cell lines and in an orthotopic RCC model. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that patients with higher gankyrin expression presented worse prognosis of RCC patients in the two cohorts. Gankyrin served as an independent prognostic factor for RCC patients even after multivariable adjustment by clinical variables. Time-dependent AUC and Harrell's c-index analysis presented that the incorporation of the gankyrin classifier into the current clinical prognostic parameters such as TNM stage, Fuhrman nuclear grade or SSIGN score achieved a greater accuracy than without it in predicting prognosis of RCC patients. All