Differential immunohistochemical expression of Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 in renal cell carcinoma

Abstract

Background Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is a heterogeneous cancer with many histological and molecular subtypes. Many new potential diagnostic, prognostic, and predictive biomarkers are still emerging. RCC treatment approaches are plentiful, including surgical resection, ablation, and active surveillance as well as immunotherapy. However, many cases are nonresponsive to such modalities and others experience recurrence or metastatic disease. Accordingly, the research work nowadays is concerned with looking for new targeted therapy biomarkers to treat RCC. Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 are the proposed biomarkers for this issue. Aim and methods This work aims to review the expression of Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 immune markers among the main histological subtypes of RCC and their correlation with clinicopathological parameters. To carry out this work, 60 cases of RCC were included in this study: 36 clear RCC, 16 papillary RCC I and II, and eight cases chromophobe RCC. Results Galectin-1 was highly expressed in 42 out of 60 cases, while Galectin-3 was highly expressed in only 13 cases. There was a statistically significant association between Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 expression and the histological subtype being expressed more in chromophobe subtype rather than others. There was a statistically significant inverse association between Galectin-1 expression and lymphovascular invasion as well as Galectin-3 expression and tumor necrosis and hemorrhage. There was no statistically significant association between Galectin-1 and 3 and the remaining clinicopathological parameters. Conclusion Galectin-1 and Galectin-3 could be used as potential diagnostic markers for chromophobe RCC as they are highly expressed in this subtype in comparison to others and can be used as targeted biomarkers for RCC therapy in the future. Galectin-3 has an anti-necrotic role and this could lead to chemotherapy resistance.