Tumor Content of the Antiapoptosis Molecule Survivin and Recurrence of Bladder Cancer

Abstract

Transitional-cell carcinoma of the bladder is the fourth most common cancer among American men, with approximately 50,000 new cases and 10,500 deaths from the disease every year. Fifty to 80 percent of affected patients have local recurrence of tumor, an event that frequently heralds muscle invasion and metastatic disease. Despite the search for markers that can be used to predict disease progression, no single molecule studied to date has been shown to identify patients at high risk for recurrences.¹ Recently, a newly identified inhibitor of apoptosis,² survivin, was found to be expressed in many cancers but not in normal tissues in adults,³ and its presence was correlated with more aggressive forms of neuroblastoma and poor survival among patients with colorectal cancer.⁴