Focus on urinary bladder cancer markers: a review

Abstract

Finding and development of new bladder cancer markers is still a very dynamic field. Because of the mass of all these markers it is impossible to report all of them. This paper reviews the role of bladder cancer markers in diagnosis and highlights the most important biomarkers studied and reported recently. A medline based literature search was performed to examine the field of bladder cancer markers. Major topics focus on selected bladder cancer markers from nearly all categories of the wide field of bladder cancer markers: Hematuria, FISH, FGFR3, SURVIVIN, u-PAR, TP53 mutation, HER-2/neu, TPA, NMP22, CK-19, CK-20, CYFRA 21-1. The use and clinical importance as diagnostic help are discussed. In this review a highlight to some of the most important markers was made. Further determination of recurrence and progression marker will contribute to establish better treatments for the individual patient. Molecular staging of urological tumors will allow selecting cases that will require systemic treatment. It is necessary and important to integrate under the same objectives basic and clinical research.