All p-values were two sided. Results TLR9 protein expression in RCC There were 138 RCC tumours available for the evaluation of TLR9 immunoreactivity. Examples of TLR9 staining patterns are shown in Figure 1. Twenty-one (15%) of the tumours were strongly positive, 39 (28%) moderately positive, 52 (38%) weakly positive and 26 (19%) negative for cytoplasmic TLR9 immunostaining. For the further analyses, the weakly, moderately and strongly positive cases were combined and grouped as TLR9 positive samples (n = 112, 81%). Some nuclear TLR9 immunopositivity click here was also detected in 60 (44%) tumour

samples. In addition to immunoexpression of TLR9 in the tumour cells, immunoreactivity was observed in endothelial and inflammatory cells as well as in some fibroblasts. Figure 1 TLR9 immunostaining in HSP inhibitor clinical trial RCC. Tumours with high cytoplasmic expression (A) and negative cytoplasmic expression (B) are shown. Magnification ×400, scale bar 50 μm. Association of cytoplasmic TLR9 expression with the clinicopathological characteristics The distributions

of pT-class, stage, nuclear grade and histological subtype of RCC and their associations with cytoplasmic TLR9 expression are presented in Table 1. No statistically significant associations were detected between cytoplasmic TLR9 expression and pT-class, stage or grade. The immunoexpression of TLR9 did not associate with tumour necrosis (data not shown). There was no association between TLR9 expression and histological subtype. The immunoexpression of TLR9 was common in every histological subtype of RCC and immunopositivity for TLR9 was detected in 100 (82%), 6 (67%), 4 (80%) and 2 (100%) cases tumours representing the histological subtypes

of clear cell RCC, papillary RCC, chromophobe RCC and unclassified RCC, respectively. Nuclear TLR9 expression did not have any association with these characteristics (data not shown). Table 1 Associations between Beta adrenergic receptor kinase cytoplasmic TLR9 expression and tumour pT-class, stage, grade and histological subtype   Cytoplasmic TLR9 expression   negative positive p-value pT class       pT1 12 (18%) 56 (82%) 0.31 pT2 4 (36%) 7 (64%)   pT3 8 (15%) 45 (85%)   pT4 2 (33%) 4 (67%)   Stage       I 11 (17%) 52 (83%) 0.27 II 4 (36%) 7 (64%)   III 6 (13%) 39 (87%)   IV 5 (26%) 14 (74%)   Nuclear Grade       I 0 (0%) 5 (100%) 0.69 II 13 (18%) 60 (82%)   III 9 (25%) 27 (75%)   IV 4 (18%) 18 (82%)   Histology       clear cell 22 (18%) 100 (82%) 0.69 papillary 3 (33%) 6 (67%)   chromophobic 1 (20%) 4 (80%)   undifferentiated 0 (0%) 2 (100%)   Prognostic significance of TLR9 expression in RCC The RCC-specific survival was significantly longer for patients whose tumours did express cytoplasmic TLR9, as compared with patients whose tumours were negative for cytoplasmic TLR9 expression (p = 0.007)(Figure 2.). The hazard ratio (HR) of patients without TLR9-expressing tumours was 2.40 (95% CI 1.24-4.63, p = 0.009).