Differential gene expression profile between progressive and de novo muscle invasive bladder cancer and its prognostic implication

Abstract

This study aimed to ascertain gene expression profle diferences between progressive muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) and de novo MIBC, and to identify prognostic biomarkers to improve patients' treatment. Retrospective multicenter study in which 212 MIBC patients who underwent radical cystectomy between 2000 and 2019 were included. Gene expression profles were determined in 26 samples using Illumina microarrays. The expression levels of 94 genes were studied by quantitative PCR in an independent set of 186 MIBC patients. In a median follow-up of 16 months, 46.7% patients developed tumor progression after cystectomy. In our series, progressive MIBC patients show a worse tumor progression (p= 0.024) and cancer-specifc survival (CSS) (p= 0.049) than the de novo group. A total of 480 genes were found to be diferently expressed between both groups. Diferential expression of 24 out of the 94 selected genes was found in an independent cohort. RBPMC2 and DSC3 were found as independent prognostic biomarkers of tumor progression and CALD1 and LCOR were identifed as prognostic biomarkers of CSS between both groups. In conclusion, progressive and de novo MIBC patients show diferent clinical outcome and gene expression profles. Gene expression patterns may contribute to predict high-risk of progression to distant metastasis or CSS.