PYGO2 as a tumor marker in low-grade renal cell carcinoma

Abstract Background Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is considered as one of the main causes of urological cancer-related mortalities globally. Early stage diagnosis can improve prognosis among RCC patients. However, a noticeable rate of RCC cases are diagnosed in advanced tumor stage due to the typical clinical symptoms that result in therapeutic failure and poor prognosis. Metastatic RCC patients have also a poor response toward chemo-radiotherapy. Therefore, it is required to assess the molecular biology of RCC progression to propose the novel diagnostic and therapeutic markers among these patients. Wnt signaling pathway has key roles in normal kidney development and RCC progression. PYGO2 as a co-activator of Wnt pathway in a complex with ß-catenin/BCL9 has pivotal roles in tumor progression. Since, there is not any report about the probable role of PYGO2 in RCC progression; we assessed the levels of PYGO2 expressions in RCC patients. Methods Forty-three freshly RCC tumor and corresponding normal tissues were obtained to evaluate the levels of PYGO2 mRNA expressions using the real-time PCR method. We also assessed the correlations between the levels of PYGO2 mRNA expressions and clinicopathological features of RCC patients. Results There was a significant correlation between the levels of PYGO2 expressions and grade in which low grade tumors had higher levels of PYGO2 expressions compared with high-grade tumors ( p = 0.048). Levels of PYGO2 expressions were noticeably higher in younger RCC patients compared with older patients. Moreover, females had higher levels of PYGO2 expressions compared with males among RCC patients. Conclusions It seems that PYGO2 can be involved in the early stage and grades of RCC progression and can be suggested as a diagnostic marker for the early detection of RCC tumors following the further assessments in serum samples.