RNA Sequencing Reveals Upregulation of RUNX1-RUNX1T1 Gene Signatures in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

In the past few years, therapies targeted at the von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) and hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF) pathways, such as sunitinib and sorafenib, have been developed to treat clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). However, the majority of patients will eventually show resistance to antiangiogenesis therapies. The purpose of our study was to identify novel pathways that could be potentially used as targets for new therapies. Whole transcriptome sequencing (RNA-Seq) was conducted on eight matched tumor and adjacent normal tissue samples. A novel RUNX1-RUNX1T1 pathway was identified which was upregulated in ccRCC through gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). We also confirmed the findings based on previously published gene expression microarray data. Our data shows that upregulated of the RUNX1-RUNX1T1 gene set maybe an important factor contributing to the etiology of ccRCC.