Biology subjects

Sakic, I.

Publications and source records attributed to Sakic, I..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Urinary multi-omics reveal non-invasive diagnostic biomarkers in clear cell renal cell carcinoma

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the kidney malignancy with the highest incidence and mortality rates. Despite the high patient burden, there are no biomarkers for rapid diagnosis and public health surveillance. Urine would be an ideal source of ccRCC biomarkers due to the low invasiveness, easy accessibility, and the kidneys intrinsic role in filtering urine. In the present work, by combining proteomics, lipidomics and metabolomics, we detected urogenital metabolic dysregulation in ccRCC patients with increased lipid metabolism, altered mitochondrial respiration signatures and increased urinary lipid content. Importantly, we identify three early-stage diagnostic biomarkers for ccRCC in urine samples: Serum amyloid A1 (SAA1), Haptoglobin (HP) and Lipocalin 15 (LCN15). We further implemented a parallel reaction monitoring mass spectrometry protocol for rapid and sensitive detection of SAA1, HP and LCN15 and combined all three proteins into a diagnostic UrineScore. In our discovery cohort, this score had a performance accuracy of 96% in receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis for classification of ccRCC versus control cases. Our data identifies tractable and highly efficacious urinary biomarkers for ccRCC diagnosis and serve as a first step towards the development of more rapid and accessible urinary diagnostic platforms.

cancer biology↗

bioRxiv2024

CLEC18A interacts with sulfated GAGs and controls clear cell renal cell carcinoma progression

C-type lectins are a large family of proteins with essential functions in both health and disease. In cancer, some C-type lectins have been found to both promote and inhibit tumor growth, but many of the C-type lectins still remain uncharacterised in a tumor context. Therefore, there is growing interst in further elucidating the mechanisms with which C-type lectins control tumor growth. Here, we report a key role of the CLEC18 family of C-type lectins in the progression of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). The CLEC18 family is conserved across the entire Chordata phylum with recent gene duplication events in humans. We found that CLEC18A is exclusively expressed in the proximal tubule of the kidney and the medial habenula of the brain. We further identified sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) of proteoglycans as the main CLEC18A ligand, making them unique among C-type lectins. In ccRCC patients, high expression of the CLEC18 family lectins in the tumor are associated with improved survival. In mouse models of ccRCC, deletion of the mouse ortholog Clec18a resulted in enhanced tumor growth. Our results establishes CLEC18A as a novel and critical regulators of ccRCC tumor growth and highlights the potential benefit of modulating CLEC18 expression in the renal tumor microenvironment.

cancer biology↗