[Use of silicon chip technology to detect protein-based tumor markers in bladder cancer]

The protein structure of human tumor tissue has a significant influence on the molecular attributes. It was demonstrated that the individual prognosis of tumor patients is among other things dependent on molecular tumor tissue characteristics.A promising marker is E-cadherin, an adhesion glycoprotein which plays a central role in the mediation of cell-cell contacts. Aberrant E-cadherin expressions were described in several tumors such as in bladder cancer. This was also found to be correlated with tumor invasion and survival. There are hardly any fast, quantitative and easily automated protein assays in everyday practice which can analyze several markers at the same time. With silicon chip technology we have a new detection and measurement method which makes it possible to give a quantitative analysis of numerous different proteins in tissue, urine, or serum in a few minutes.