Aberrant activity of Wnt/Frizzled signaling pathway in renal cancer cell lines

The expression ofWnt, Wntreceptor-Frizzled, and several other key components in Wnt pathway in renal cancer cell lines was studied. The result of semi-quantitative RT-PCR has shown that the expression level ofWnt5A andhFz5 mRNA were higher in renal cancer cell line (GRC-1) than in normal renal cell line (HK-2). This result has been confirmed byin situ hybridization. The expression of β-catenin protein was obviously higher in GRC-1 than in HK-2 (P< 0.01), but there were no different expressions of its mRNA between 3 lines. The reasons of the overexpression of β-catenin has been investigated by means of immunocytochemistry, SSCP and so on, no mutation ofβ-catenin gene and APC were found. That means that the overexpression ofWnt5A/hFz5 might be the reason of overexpression of β-catenin. It was concluded that the aberrant activity of Wnt pathway might play an important role in renal cell carcinoma.