Prognostic factors for bladder cancer.

Cancer of the urinary bladder is the fifth most common cancer in men and the second most urological malignancy in Western society [17], with an incidence rate per year of 29.8/100,000 males. Bladder tumors are distinguished as either invasive or superficial: invasive tumors are generally associated with poor prognosis, while 20-30% of superficial carcinomas recur and progress to become invasive and metastic [26, 27]. The most common prognostic factors for classification of urothelial cancer are staging and grading, which are based on morphological criteria. In the past decade, however, other criteria have been developed as a possible prognostic aid to better disease management, such as expression of specific cell surface antigens, DNA content, chromosomal aberrations, gene rearrangements and point mutations [26, 7]. Since most tumors of the bladder are carcinomas and are associated with dedifferentiation and high metastatic capability, we investigated whether reduced expression of so-called differentiation factors in combination with increased cell motility might be correlated with tumor progression.