BACKGROUND: The serine peptidase inhibitor Kazal type 13 (SPINK13) gene has tumor suppressor activity, but its role in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) remains unknown. This study aimed to investigate mRNA expression of SPINK13 in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (CCRCC) in human tissue and to use bioinformatics data to investigate the role of SPINK13 expression as a clinicopathological and prognostic biomarker for patients with CCRCC.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Patients with CCRCC (N=533) with available RNA sequence data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-CCRCC database were analyzed with patients who had a tissue diagnosis of CCRCC (N=305) at the Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Center (FUSCC). Differential transcriptional and proteome expression profiles were obtained from the ONCOMINE cancer microarray database, TCGA, and the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database. Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) measured SPINK13 mRNA expression in 305 samples of CCRCC tissue from the FUSCC. The effects of clinicopathological parameters on progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) were analyzed using the Kaplan-Meier and log-rank test.

RESULTS: Transcriptional and proteome expression of SPINK13 were significantly increased CCRCC tissue samples. Increased SPINK13 mRNA expression was significantly associated with reduced PFS and OS in 838 patients with CCRCC patients from the two independent cohorts, the FUSCC and the TCGA-CCRCC cohorts (p<0.01). Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) showed that SPINK13 expression was involved in complement, apical junction, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), glycolysis, hypoxia, and inflammation signaling pathways.

CONCLUSIONS: Increased expression of SPINK13 was associated with poor prognosis in patients with CCRCC.

Keywords: Biological Markers, Carcinoma, Renal Cell, Disease-Free Survival, Biomarkers, Tumor, Computational Biology, Databases, Genetic, Kidney Neoplasms, Serine Peptidase Inhibitors, Kazal Type