Tumor cells collected during the removal of a cancerous bladder may help clinicians better identify high-risk cancers, determine prognosis, refine their use of biomarkers, and provide more personalized care, according to a study published in Scientific Reports.
For the study, researchers led by Ralph Weichselbaum, MD, University of Chicago, IL, collected 71 tumor samples from patients who received treatment for bladder cancer at the University of Chicago. They then used flow cytometry to isolate and count specific tumor cell subtypes within each tumor.
Their analysis revealed an excess of one relatively rare subtype in patients with early-stage disease, the basal tumor cell (BTC), which could be attributed to cancer growth and progression. Indeed, among patients with a high expression of BTC, the risk of death was more than 3 times higher than what was observed in patients who did not have a high expression.
When researchers examined the expression of genes in BTCs, they were also able to identify a potentially prognostic biomarker for bladder cancer, cell division cycle 25C (CDC25C), a protein that drives cell division. An expanded analysis of more than 400 patients with bladder cancer revealed that CDC25C expression was associated with an increased risk of death, even after the removal of a cancerous bladder. However, this association was not present in patients who received chemotherapy, meaning a test for CDC25C could help to determine which patients with bladder cancer are most likely to benefit from drug treatment.
Authors concluded that BTCs has substantial utility in the identification of new biomarkers for bladder cancer and that CDC25C may be a prognostic marker capable of predicting which patients are most likely to benefit from treatment.
“These findings constitute a critical step toward the elucidation of the biology of tumor differentiation in bladder cancer and improvement of therapy selection for bladder cancer patients,” they wrote.
However, before CDC25C expression can be used in a clinical setting, the accuracy of this new prognostic model and biomarker will need to be confirmed in larger studies.
