Telomerase Activity Analysis In Urine Sediment for Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer with an incidence of 15 cases per 100,000 persons in the global population is the most common tumor of the urinary tract. Imaging techniques, cytoscopy, and cytology are not sufficiently accurate to detect early stage tumors, and the need for new diagnostic markers is still an urgency. Among the biomarkers most recently proposed to improve diagnostic accuracy and especially sensitivity, increasing attention has been focused on the role of the ribonucleoprotein, telomerase. Previous studies have shown that the quantitative telomerase repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay performed in voided urine is an important noninvasive tool for the diagnosis of bladder tumors since it has very high sensitivity and specificity, even for early stage and low-grade tumors. Telomerase activity in urine determined by TRAP seems to be marker of great potential, even more advantageous in cost-benefit terms when used in selected symptomatic patients or professionally high-risk subgroups. Here we report the real-time PCR protocol to detect telomerase activity in urine sediment for bladder cancer.