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

The expression of Wnt, Wnt receptor-frizzled, and several other key compone nts in Wnt pathway in renal cancer cell lines was studied. The result of se mi-quantitative RT-PCR has shown that the expression level of Wnf5A and hFz 5 mRNA were higher in renal cancer cell line (GRC-1) than in normal renal c ell line (HK-2). This result has been confirmed by in situ hybridization, T he expression of beta -catenin protein was obviously higher in GRC-1 than i n HK-2 (P<0.01), but there were no different expressions of its mRNA betwee n 3 lines. The reasons of the overexpression of <beta>-catenin has been inv estigated by means of immunocytochemistry, SSCP and so on, no mutation of b eta -catenin gene and APC were found. That means that the overexpression of Wnf5A/hFz5 might be the reason of overexpression of beta -catenin. It was concluded that the aberrant activity of Wnt pathway might play an important role in renal cell carcinoma.