[Recent progress of prognostic factors in renal cell carcinoma]

Although it has been considered that the pathological stage is the most powerful prognostic marker for a patient with renal cell carcinoma, many investigations have been performed to discover a new predictive marker of this tumor. Recent studies have shown that nuclear morphometry, cell proliferation analyses, (Ki-67 and AgNOR), expression of cell adhesion molecule, (cadherin-6 and alpha-catenin), and protease expression, expression and serum level of growth factors (VEGF and bFGF), might be among the new candidates for a useful prognostic marker. However, proliferating cell nuclear antigen, genetic alterations or DNA ploidy are unlikely to be reliable markers to predict the prognosis of the patient. In further analysis, multivariate analyses for these markers and new molecular markers will be needed to establish a new diagnostic tool that is more useful than classical pathological stage classification of the tumor.