CTLA-4 Expression Linked With High Survival Rate by Checkpoint Inhibitor Therapy in Renal Cancer

Release Date: 07-Nov-2020

There are several molecules or proteins that are witnessed to improve the overall survival rate of the cancer patients. Among all, Cytotoxic T Lymphocyte associated Protein 4 is estimated to be one of the important protein molecules that is responsible for improving the lives of cancer patients. Therefore, the Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis, uni- and multi-variate Cox analysis has been done in order to study the prognostic value of the said protein molecule in the treatment of renal cell carcinoma.

Some of the other techniques that were used to study the prognostic value of the protein molecule in the case of renal cell carcinoma are Gene Ontology (GO), the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) and CIBERSORT, ESTIMATE algorithm, ssGSEA and somatic mutation analyses. The primary aim of using all the above-mentioned techniques was to gather information about the impact of the protein molecule on the overall landscape of TILs infiltration as well as genetic mutation. Also, some of the secondary aim of the researchers was to investigate the impact of CTLA-4 with other immune checkpoint inhibitors such as PD-1 and PD-L1.

The observed results for the above-mentioned analysis were as follows: the concentration of immune checkpoint inhibitor CTLA-4 was up-regulated in the renal cell carcinoma tissues as well as it was related with poor prognosis and disease progression.  Also, it was observed that the protein immune checkpoint inhibitor was responsible for regulating the activity of T cells as well as TIL abundant tumor microenvironment. Other than this, immune checkpoint inhibitor CTLA-4 was also adjoined with immunosuppressed phenotype. CTLA-4 mutation was also found to be associated with frequent BRCA-associated protein 1 (BAP1) mutation. Therefore, from the above experiments it was concluded that the renal cell cancer patients associated with CTLA-4 high expression were more inclined towards receiving benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors.