Despite of initial curative therapy, many patients with bladder cancer develop metastases in the course of disease. For this reason, we are looking for further prognostic markers, besides body-imaging and histologic staging. In this study, we investigated the detection of disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow of patients with bladder cancer. We used qPCR and the six molecular markers CK20, CK14, CK17, UPK2, SPINK1 and TMPRSS2. CK20 and SPINK1 turned out as promising markers for future use in clinical routine. A trend was observed between CK20-expression and poor prognosis. A highly significant correlation was found between SPINK1-expression and poor prognosis, however these results are based on few incidents. Further studies with bigger cohorts and longer follow-up intervals are needed to verify and confirm our results.
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Despite of initial curative therapy, many patients with bladder cancer develop metastases in the course of disease. For this reason, we are looking for further prognostic markers, besides body-imaging and histologic staging. In this study, we investigated the detection of disseminated tumor cells in bone marrow of patients with bladder cancer. We used qPCR and the six molecular markers CK20, CK14, CK17, UPK2, SPINK1 and TMPRSS2. CK20 and SPINK1 turned out as promising markers for future use in c...
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