Predicting Disease Course in Bladder Cancer: STAG2 as a Prognostic Biomarker

Abstract

Bladder cancer is the fifth most common cancer in the United States and the fourth most common in men, with >80,000 new cases annually. While most tumors can be surgically resected, as many as 70% of these tumors will recur, and ~20% of these recurrences will progress to invasion of the surrounding detrusor muscle. Because it is not possible to accurately predict which tumors are most likely to recur and progress, clinicians err on the side of caution and perform an extremely intensive post-resection surveillance regimen, often leading to overtreatment. Therefore, it is imperative that prognostic biomarkers for bladder cancer be developed. Here, we validate STAG2 as a biomarker of both recurrence and progression in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer. We also explore the role of STAG2 as a biomarker in muscle-invasive disease. Finally, we discuss a STAG2-deficient bladder cancer cell line model that we developed in order to study the effects of STAG2 loss biologically.