Developing proteomic biomarkers for bladder cancer: towards clinical application

Clinical use of proteomic biomarkers has the potential to substantially improve the outcomes of patients with bladder cancer. An unmet clinical need evidently exists for noninvasive biomarkers, which might enable improvements in both the diagnosis and prognosis of patients with bladder cancer, as well as improved monitoring of patients for the presence of recurrence. Urine is considered the optimal noninvasive source of proteomic biomarkers in patients with bladder cancer. Currently, a number of single-protein biomarkers have been detected in urine and tissue using a variety of proteomic techniques, each having specific conceptual considerations and technical implications. Promising preclinical data are available for several of these proteins; however, the combination of single urinary proteins into multimarker panels might better encompass the molecular heterogeneity of bladder cancer within this patient population, and prove more effective in clinical use.