Professor Colin McArdle, University Dept. Evidence points to a further increase in the future as the population ages significantly. Uniquely amongst cancers, bladder cancer recurrence frequently occurs on multiple occasions with patients sometimes experiencing 10 or more episodes of recurrent disease in the course of follow-up. Clinical management of this disease is therefore intensive with patients undergoing multiple invasive investigations to ensure detection of recurrent tumours. Despite the significance of this disease, progress in diagnosis, treatment and understanding of the genetics of bladder cancer has been slow.
Patient treatment is stratified by tumour stage, grade and recurrence status.
However, at all levels of disease treatment pathological diagnosis can be tainted with a degree of uncertainty. Most crucially no clear predictive identifier of disease recurrence or progression exists, limiting the options for interventional chemotherapy as a means of preventing such events. This research is aimed specifically at studying molecular markers of disease outcome as potential diagnostic tests for future recurrence or progression. In understanding cancer genetics the challenge is to identify not merely genes implicated in cancer progression per se, but to rigorously link these genes to specific disease events. This programme of research has successfully identified genetic abnormalities associated with disease outcome and progress is made in the identification of gene loci associated with disease recurrence and progression.