Tetsuo Fujita

By Tetsuo Fujita, Masatsugu Iwamura, Shinji Kurosaka, Ken-ichi Tabata, Kazumasa Matsumoto, Kazunari Yoshida and Shiro Baba

Part of the book: Emerging Research and Treatments in Renal Cell Carcinoma

By Tetsuo Fujita, Masatsugu Iwamura, Kazumasa Matsumoto and Kazunari Yoshida

Part of the book: Renal Tumor

By Kazumasa Matsumoto, Morihiro Nishi, Hideyasu Tsumura, Ken-ichi Tabata, Tetsuo Fujita and Masatsugu Iwamura

Bladder cancer (BC) is the second most common malignancy in the urologic field. Preoperative predictive biomarkers of cancer progression and prognosis are imperative for optimizing appropriate treatment for patients with BC. The prediction of patient outcomes before initial treatment would enable physicians to choose better modalities and avoid unnecessary aggressive treatments. In addition, preoperative molecular markers are expected to be a minimally invasive tool for predicting precise prognosis and progression in patients with BC. The proteins secreted from the tumor cells reflect various states of tumors in real time and at given conditions, and those expression patterns are different from normal cell components. Approximately 20–25% of cellular proteins are in extracellular spaces, and these proteins have important roles in invasion, angiogenesis, regulation of cell-to-cell interactions, and metastasis. It has been suggested that tumor-secreting proteins are a promising source for tumor diagnostic biomarkers. Proteomic analysis was utilized to identify the secreted proteins in sera from patients with BC. Several biomarkers associated with BC are reviewed here.

Part of the book: Role of Biomarkers in Medicine