The increasing demands for personalized targeted therapy directed against Renal Cell Carcinoma has driven a search for predictive markers. Novel therapies targeting HIF-1α in Renal Cell Carcinoma have been developed and HIF-1α has been suggested as a novel predictive marker of response to therapy. The surgical resection of a kidney tumor induces tissue ischemia and HIF-1α is an oxygen-sensitive transcription factor, which is known to be up-regulated during hypoxia.
This study investigated the impact of intra-surgical and post-surgical ischemia on protein expression levels of HIF-1α and three related biomarkers (VEGF, GLUT-1 and CAIX) in 20 patients with Renal Cell Carcinoma with immunohistochemistry and Western Blotting.
Surgical ischemia did not have a significant impact on protein expression levels of any of the investigated markers. Long post-surgical ischemia resulted in reduced expression levels of HIF-1α, probably due to autolysis.
Our results suggest that HIF-1α is a stable protein, with expression levels not affected by intra-surgical ischemia and hence HIF-1α is suited for marker analysis.

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