Knockdown of clusterin inhibits the growth and migration of renal carcinoma cells and leads to differential gene expression

Clusterin (CLU) is a glycoprotein involved in tumor progression, whose expression level correlates with the metastasis of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, the mechanism by which CLU plays an oncogenic role in RCC remains unclear. In this study, we used the human renal cancer cell 786-O as an experimental model. We knocked down CLU expression in the 786-O cells using lentiviral vector-mediated delivery of RNAi, and then compared the gene expression profiles between the knocked down CLU 786-O cells and control cells. We observed that CLU knockdown induced apoptosis and inhibited the proliferation and migration of 786-O cells. Microassay analysis revealed changes in the expression of 588 genes between the 786-O cells infected by a si-CLU lentivirus and the control cells, where 356 genes were upregulated and 232 were downregulated. Pathway analysis classified the differentially expressed genes into 17 upregulated and 12 downregulated pathways, including the PI3K/Akt, MAPK and VEGF pathways. In this study, we demonstrated that CLU acts as an oncogene in RCC by promoting cell proliferation and migration and inhibiting apoptosis. Microassay analysis may provide a platform for further characterization of the individual genes implicated in the development of RCC, providing new insights into the oncogenic role of CLU.