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Review
. 2021 Mar 22;13(6):1448.
doi: 10.3390/cancers13061448.

Circulating Cell-Free DNA in Liquid Biopsies as Potential Biomarker for Bladder Cancer: A Systematic Review

Raquel Herranz  1 , Julia Oto  1 , Emma Plana  1   2 , Álvaro Fernández-Pardo  1 , Fernando Cana  1 , Manuel Martínez-Sarmiento  3 , César D Vera-Donoso  3 , Francisco España  1 , Pilar Medina  1
Affiliations
Review

Circulating Cell-Free DNA in Liquid Biopsies as Potential Biomarker for Bladder Cancer: A Systematic Review

Raquel Herranz et al. Cancers (Basel). .

Abstract

Bladder cancer (BC) is among the most frequent cancer types in the world and is the most lethal urological malignancy. Presently, diagnostic and follow-up methods for BC are expensive and invasive. Thus, the identification of novel predictive biomarkers for diagnosis, progression, and prognosis of BC is of paramount importance. To date, several studies have evidenced that cell-free DNA (cfDNA) found in liquid biopsies such as blood and urine may play a role in the particular scenario of urologic tumors, and its analysis may improve BC diagnosis report about cancer progression or even evaluate the effectiveness of a specific treatment or anticipate whether a treatment would be useful for a specific patient depending on the tumor characteristics. In the present review, we have summarized the up-to-date studies evaluating the value of cfDNA as potential diagnostic, prognostic, or monitoring biomarker for BC in several biofluids.

Keywords: bladder cancer; blood; cell-free DNA; early diagnosis; liquid biopsy; noninvasive; predictive markers; prognosis; tumor biomarkers; urine.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Overview of staging and grading of bladder cancer tumor. The figure was created with BioRender.com. NMIBC: non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer; MIBC: muscle-invasive bladder cancer.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Assortment of liquid biopsies and biomarkers found in them. Liquid biopsies comprise serum, plasma, urine, breast milk, saliva, and cerebrospinal fluid, among others. In BC, the most used liquid biopsies are serum, plasma, and urine. The biomarkers comprised in these liquid biopsies are circulating tumor cells (CTCs), cell-free DNA (cfDNA), messenger RNA (mRNA), several types of non-coding RNAs, extracellular vesicles (EVs), and tumor-educated platelets (TEPs), among others [16,18]. The figure was created using Krita.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Increasing number of annual publications on the role of cfDNA in cancer and in BC in the PubMed database.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Flowchart showing the selection of articles for the systematic review.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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