Predictive Immunohistochemical Markers Related to Drug Selection for Patients Treated with Sunitinib or Sorafenib for Metastatic Renal Cell Cancer

Targeted drug decisions in metastatic renal cell carcinoma are exclusively made on the basis of clinical criteria. We investigated whether these biomarkers (HIF-1α, HIF-2α, CAIX, VEGF, VEGFR1, VEGFR2, VEGFR3, PDGFB, PDGFRA, PDGFRB, CD31, CD44, bcl-xL, KIT, p21, CXCR4, PTEN, (CSF)-1R, RET, and FLT-3) can predictive the different effects between sunitinib and sorafenib treatments and are available to guide targeted drug selection. We enrolled all patients who underwent nephrectomy with postoperative sunitinib- or sorafenib-treatment at our institution from 2007 to 2012. Immunohistochemical approach was applied to assess the potential differential effects of immunostainings between sunitinib- and sorafenib-treated groups. We found that patients with high HIF-2α, CD31 expression showed greater relative PFS and OS benefit and patients with high CAIX expression presented greater relative OS benefit from sunitinib than from sorafenib, patients with high VEGFR1 or PDGFRB expression levels exhibited worse relative PFS benefit from sunitinib than from sorafenib. Namely high HIF-2α, CD31, and CAIX expression levels along with low VEGFR1 and PDGFRB expression levels improved the benefit of sunitinib treatment compared with sorafenib treatment. These results can identify whether patients can benefit more from sunitinib or sorafenib for drug selection guidance, eventually with precision medicine.