Sprouty2 is associated with prognosis and suppresses cell proliferation and invasion in renal cell carcinoma.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the expression pattern of Sprouty2 (Spry2) and its clinicopathologic significance among patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and to detect its role in proliferation and invasion of RCC in vitro.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: The expression profile of Spry2 in RCC and matched adjacent noncancerous tissues were detected by immunohistochemistry and Western blot analysis. The expression of Spry2 was depleted by stably transfecting with small, interfering ribonucleic acid and the effects of Spry2 were assessed using the cell proliferation and transwell assay.

RESULTS: We found Spry2 protein expressed at lower levels and modestly downregulated in cancerous RCC tissues compared with adjacent normal tissue (P <.001). We also measured the expression level of Spry2 in 103 archived RCC tissues by immunohistochemical staining and found its correlation with clinicopathologic findings such as tumor size (P = .002), pathologic TNM stage (P <.001), tumor grade (P <.001), lymph node metastasis (P = .001), distant metastasis (P <.001), and poor survival (P = .001). In addition, small interfering ribonucleic acid-induced depletion of Spry2 expression promoted proliferation and invasion in RCC cell lines.

CONCLUSION: Collectively, our results have demonstrated for the first time, to our knowledge, that Spry2 might offer an attractive new target for prognostic and therapeutic intervention in RCC.