This group of NMPs is important in several ways. They are found only in one type of tissue, the bladder, and not in other normal body tissues. Detection of the bladder cancer NMPs should vastly improve the initial diagnosis of bladder cancer and, in many cases, allow physicians to treat disease at an earlier stage when it is easier to cure, according to the investigators. This disease annually strikes more than 50,000 Americans and each year kills more than 11,000.
Traditional detection relies on cytology, or the detection of cancer cells shed in the urine.
For these reasons, detection of early bladder cancer using cytology fails as much as half the time. Detection of recurrent bladder cancer could also be improved, and would help the 80 percent of bladder cancer patients who are known to suffer localized, recurrent disease, according to the authors. The discovery of these five specific bladder cancer NMPs resulted from a study of samples of bladder tumor tissue taken from 17 individuals, which were compared to non-cancerous bladder tissue samples from the same patients and normal bladder tissue samples removed from several organ donors. Three separate bladder cancer cell lines also were cultured and evaluated to determine their production of NMPs and to aid in distinguishing NMPs that are contained in normal bladder cells from those found only in cancerous bladder cells. Many of these genes can initiate cancer or promote cancerous growth.