Objective
The management of patients with superficial bladder cancer is difficult. No reliable means exists to determine whether a tumor will progress towards an infiltrative form, which requires radical surgery (cystectomy), or whether it will remain superficial, which requires only conservative surgery (resection). In addition, no dependable marker exists to predict whether a primary tumor will reappear or not during the years following surgical resection, forcing patients to undergo constant revisions and overburdening health care systems.
Numerous markers of various types (genes, transcripts and proteins) have been analyzed in bladder cancer studies. In them, a number of markers have been found to harbor potential for the prognosis (progression and recurrence) of superficial tumors. However, the analyses have often been limited to a single type of marker and even to a single marker. To the best of our knowledge, no study has attempted to integrate different types of markers for an increased predictive power.
The main scientific goal of the DRoP-ToP project is to identify a set of markers that harbors high predictive power for tumor progression and recurrence. To this end, we propose to collect tumor, blood and urine samples from bladder cancer patients with a detailed clinical record, to measure in them markers of different types, to find statistically significant correlations between measurements and clinical records, and to select a predictor set. In addition, DRoP-ToP pursues an ambitious technological challenge: the integration of said subset of markers in a single prognosis microarray.
In order to achieve this we propose to measure all three types of marker biomolecules with a single type of probe: oligonucleotides. Specifically, we propose to use short, long and aptamer oligonucleotides for the detection of gene, transcript and protein markers respectively.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP6-2005-LIFESCIHEALTH-7
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Funding Scheme
STREP - Specific Targeted Research ProjectCoordinator
DERIO
Spain