Role of the PI3K/Akt pathway in human renal cell carcinoma

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common form of renal cancer. Currently, RCC accounts for 9 out of 10 cases of kidney cancer diagnosed in the United States. According to the American Cancer Society, there were approximately 65,150 new cases in 2013 and 13,680 deaths were expected from this disease. Current data clearly shows that RCC responds very poorly to current chemotherapy and radiation treatment options. This results in invasive surgery being the only viable option in many cases. Therefore, there is an urgent need for better clinical treatment options. As with other forms of cancer, there have been suggestions of altered functioning of intracellular signaling pathways responsible for the pathogenesis of RCC. Treatment with drugs that inhibit these particular pathways could lead to apoptosis of renal cancer cells and improvement in patient outcomes. Since PI3K and members of its intracellular signaling cascade are often activated in different cancers, we investigated whether this pathway was involved in RCC. Our study is the first to reveal the activation of PI3K pathway in human RCC biopsies with a comparison across all grades of cancer.