Prostate, bladder, kidney and testis cancers, the most common genitourinary (GU) neoplasms, are generally clinically silent at their earliest stages when curative treatment is most likely successful. However, there are no consensual guidelines for GU cancer screening and available methods are characterized by suboptimal sensitivity and specificity. Moreover, standard clinical and pathological parameters meet with important limitations in the assessment of prognosis in an individual basis. Herein, we focus on the development of epigenetic-based GU cancer biomarkers, which have emerged from exploratory studies in recent years and that hold the promise to revolutionize the clinical management of GU cancer patients.
Written by:
Jerónimo C, Henrique R. Are you the author?
Cancer Epigenetics Group, Research Center of the Portuguese Oncology Institute, Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal; Department of Genetics, Portuguese Oncology Institute, Porto, Rua Dr. António Bernardino de Almeida, 4200-072 Porto, Portugal; Department of Pathology and Molecular Immunology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar, University of Porto, Largo Prof. Abel Salazar 2, 4099-003 Porto, Portugal.
Reference: Cancer Lett. 2011 Dec 23. Epub ahead of print.
doi: 10.1016/j.canlet.2011.12.026
PubMed Abstract
PMID: 22198482
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