Figure 4.

Protein expression analysis of miRNA biogenesis components in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), normal, and benign tissue samples. The protein expression levels of AGO2, DROSHA, DGCR8, XPO5, RAN, TARBP2, and DICER1 in normal, benign, and adrenocortical cancer tissue homogenate samples were measured using ELISA. The results revealed that XPO5, RAN, TARBP2, and DICER1 protein expression was downregulated in cancer samples compared to both normal and benign samples, suggesting a potential role for these proteins in cancer development through post-translational modification. In contrast, AGO2 protein expression was significantly higher in cancer samples than in both normal and benign samples. These findings highlight AGO2 as a strong candidate potential diagnostic biomarker for adrenocortical carcinoma among all the miRNA biogenesis factors analyzed. A full-colour version of this figure is available at https://doi.org/10.1530/ERC-24-0061.