Filamin A and MMP-9 Regulate Proliferation and Invasion in Renal Cell Cancer

The incidence of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) varies substantially worldwide. The rates are generally high in Europe and North America while low in Asia and South America (Ljungberg et al., 2011). Metastatic RCC is a highly fatal disease, which accounts for about a third of the patients at initial presentation. Approximately 10% to 28% of RCC develop a local recurrence or distant metastasis after curative nephrectomy. Metastatic RCC is resistant to chemotherapy and radiotherapy but responds to tyrosine kinase inhibitors and interleukin-2-based immunotherapy (Tan et al., 2013). RCC is heterogeneous and comprises several histological cell types with different genetics, biology and behavior. The identification of the genes predisposing to inherited syndromes with RCC has provided much of our knowledge of the molecular basis of early sporadic RCC. Many of the oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes that are mutated leading to pathway dysregulation in RCC remain to be elucidated.