Bioinformatic Analysis and Clinical Case Studies Identify CD276 as a Promising Diagnostic Biomarker for Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Objective This study aimed to explore the relationship between CD276 and clear cell renal carcinoma (ccRCC) and assess the diagnostic value of CD276 in ccRCC. Methods Expression levels of CD276 in ccRCC and para-cancer tissues were compared and analyzed retrospectively using data obtained from TCGA and GEO databases. The clinical data was analyzed prospectively. Immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR analyses were used to analyze the expression of CD276 at the mRNA and protein levels. These analyses compared the expression between ccRCC tissues and para-cancer tissues obtained from 70 patients with ccRCC. Next, ELISA was used to analyze peripheral blood samples from 70 patients with ccRCC and 72 healthy individuals, facilitating the differentiation of ccRCC patients from normal controls. Finally, we utilized the Kaplan-Meier method to generate ROC curves for assessing the diagnostic value of CD276 for ccRCC. Results Analysis of TCGA and GEO data revealed that the mRNA expression of CD276 was higher in ccRCC tissues than in para-cancer tissues ( P < .05). Clinical validation using IHC and RT-PCR confirmed that the expression of CD276 was higher in ccRCC tissues than in para-cancer tissues, both at the mRNA and protein levels ( P < .05). ELISA demonstrated that the expression of CD276 was higher in ccRCC patients than in normal individuals, and patients with a higher pathological grade showed higher expression of CD276 in the peripheral blood than those with a lower pathological grade ( P < .05). ROC curves drawn from the above three datasets demonstrated that CD276 had a high diagnostic value for ccRCC (AUC = .894, .795, .938, respectively). Conclusion The expression of CD276 was higher in ccRCC tissues and positively associated with the pathological grade. Therefore, CD276 may serve as a molecular biomarker for ccRCC prediction.