Prognostic markers in muscle invasive bladder cancer

Current tumor, node, and metastasis (TNM) staging and grading systems are insufficient to accurately predict the evolution of most invasive bladder cancers irrespective of treatment. Predicting which invasive tumors will or will not recur or metastasize early is crucial in order to dictate initial therapy and to better counsel the patient. A need for tumor markers that could be incorporated into clinical practice to add prognostic information to the conventional TNM and grading systems in terms of treatment response and prognosis is crucial. This review provides an update on the most promising reported single markers and pathways, including the cell cycle markers p53, p21 and p27, and potential targets for novel therapies, such as cyclooxygenase 2 (COX 2) and factors of angiogenesis. The critical steps remain the availability of large and well-characterized data sets to validate the combination of markers, as well as high throughput methods to study tumor molecular fingerprints, such as DNA microarrays.