Review

Genetic alterations in kidney cancer

  • Onur Tokgün
  • Hakan Akça

Bull Urooncol 2013;12(3):155-162

Kidney cancer takes at 3rd place within urogenital cancers following prostate and bladder cancer. Smoking, obesity, sedentary life, hipertension, nutrition habituation, job, chronic kidney insufficiency, urinary system infection and family history are some of the factors that play role in development of kidney cancer.

Kidney cancers have two forms including both sporadic and familial forms. In the ethiology of genetically inherited renal cell carcinomas Von Hippel Lindau, Hereditary leiomyomatosis, Birt Hogg Dube syndrome, adult polycyctic kidney, tuberosclerozis, neuroblastoma, malign lymphoma etc are prescribed as important risk factors. In the ethiology of renal cell carcinomas obesity, diet, body mass index, smoking are prescribed as important risk factors.

There are many factors such as gender, race, age, stage, distant metastasis, tumor size, DNA ploidy, cell proliferation, p53 overexpression, MUC1 expression, CD44s expression, Ki67, p21, Bcl-2, PTEN, MDR and chromosomal abberations are related with the prognosis.

In the patients who are diagnosed as cancer, determining tumor behavior and prognostic factors earlier is important for treatment strategy. But still there are too many questions about this.

In this review we aimed to give a general information about genetic alterations which impacts tumor behavior.

Keywords: Kidney cancer, p53, urinary system, Ki67, CD44