Lysosomal proteases in renal cell carcinoma

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most lethal urological malignancies. By initial presentation, around 15 % of the patients have already metastases. Personalised medicine offers many opportunities to treat and understand the mechanism of the response, unfortunately, not all tumors response to the therapy. Many tumors display increased activity of lysosomal enzymes comparing to the adjacent tissue. According to the literature, the lysosomal protease cathepsin B is one of the most proteins upregulated in the resistance condition. Moreover, this protease is related with inflammation and increased cancer risk. The successful immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy based on interruption of PD-1/PD-L1 binding underlines the role of immunsystem in tumor growth. Considering that PD-1 may be regulated by lysosomal processing, makes the cathepsins family as promising target in cancer therapy. Our aim is to clarify the function of this protein and other members of the cathepsins family and investigate their role in response to the personalised therapies.