Immune signature of urothelial cancer associated with grade, recurrence, and invasion

Abstract Background Urothelial carcinoma (UC) is one of most common genitourinary malignancy and the spectrum of disease ranges from in situ lesions to muscle-invasive cancers. The non–muscle-invasive lesions have tendency to recur or progress to muscle-invasive disease. The study of the immune profile may identify immune determinants associated with high-grade, recurrence, and invasion in patients with UC. Methods Pathway-focused RT 2 profiler arrays were used to screen patients with UC for dysregulation of candidate genes of Th1-Th2-Th3 and NFκB pathways, which were then validated by real-time polymerase chain reaction on tumor samples and correlated with grade, recurrence, and invasion of tumors to identify their role in predicting behavior of the tumor. The cytokines found associated with recurrence were then validated in urine of patients with UC. Results IFNγ, IL2, IL4, IL10, IL17, CCL7, CTLA4, and SPP1 of the cytokine pathway and TLR4, TLR3, RELA, NFκB1, and MYD88 of the NFκB pathway were found differentially expressed in patients with urothelial cancer by array and quantative real-time polymerase chain reaction. Among these, IL10 and SPP1 were found consistently up-regulated in high-grade, invasive, and recurrent cases and up-regulated IL10 and CTLA4 were found associated with a short recurrence-free survival time ( P = 0.001 and P = 0.065). Urinary IL10 concentration was significantly higher in both patients with cancer and cystitis compared with healthy controls, but the difference in concentration between patients with cancer and cystitis patients was not statistically significant. However, urinary CTLA4 concentrations were found to be significantly higher in urothelial cancer patients compared with healthy controls and cystitis cases and found to be associated with poor recurrence-free survival. Conclusion The study indicates that high urinary CTLA4 concentration raises the index of suspicion of recurrence in a known case of urothelial cancer and may be used as a surveillance marker.