Mammalian SIRT4 is a tumor suppressor of clear cell renal cell carcinoma by inhibiting cancer proliferation, migration and invasion.

Abstract

Sirtuins family are defined as class III histone deacetylases (HDACs). Recently, mammalian silent information regulator two 4 (SIRT4) has been reported to be a tumor suppressor gene in multiple cancers. The objective of the present study was to explore the potential role of SIRT4 in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). We estimated SIRT4 expression levels in ccRCC and its adjacent non-neoplastic tissue by Western blotting (WB), quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) and bioinformatics data, the clinical and survival data were also collected and analyzed. In vitro study, ccRCC cell lines were transfected with SIRT4-siRNA or lentivirus to downregulate or overexpress the expression level of SIRT4. Then, the proliferation capacity of tumor cell was assessed by 5-Ethynyl-2'-deoxyuridine (EDU) assay, cell migration and invasion capacity were assessed by Transwell assays. Our results indicated that the expression level of SIRT4 in ccRCC was significantly lower than the corresponding normal tissues (P< 0.001). Meanwhile, bioinformatics data and the result of WB showed that low SIRT4 expression level was obviously involved with poor overall survival and advanced tumor stage in ccRCC patients. Biological experiments demonstrated that overexpression of SIRT4 significantly reduced the proliferation, migration and invasion ability of ccRCC cells. Conversely, downregulation of SIRT4 enhanced the proliferation, migration and invasion ability of ccRCC cells. These findings support that SIRT4 acts as a tumor suppressor in ccRCC and might be a novel biomarker and new therapeutic target for ccRCC.