Search

Bladder cancer is a complex disease associated with high morbidity and mortality rates if not treated optimally. Awareness of haematuria as the major presenting symptom is paramount, and early diagnosis with individualised treatment and follow-up is the key to a successful outcome. For non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer, the mainstay of treatment is complete resection of the tumour followed by induction and maintenance immunotherapy with intravesical BCG vaccine or intravesical chemotherapy. For muscle-invasive bladder cancer, multimodal treatment involving radical cystectomy with neoadjuvant chemotherapy offers the best chance for cure. Selected patients with muscle-invasive tumours can be offered bladder-sparing trimodality treatment consisting of transurethral resection with chemoradiation. Advanced disease is best treated with systemic cisplatin-based chemotherapy; immunotherapy is emerging as a viable salvage treatment for patients in whom first-line chemotherapy cannot control the disease. Developments in the past 2 years have shed light on genetic subtypes of bladder cancer that might differ from one another in response to various treatments.

Only in recent years have phospholipase A2 enzymes (PLA2s) emerged as cancer targets. In this work, we report the first detection of elevated PLA2 activities in plasma from patients with colorectal, lung, pancreatic, and bladder cancers as compared to healthy controls. Independent sets of clinical plasma samples were obtained from two different sites. The first set was from patients with colorectal cancer (CRC; n = 38) and healthy controls (n = 77). The second set was from patients with lung (n = 95), bladder (n = 31), or pancreatic cancers (n = 38), and healthy controls (n = 79). PLA2 activities were analyzed by a validated quantitative fluorescent assay method and subtype PLA2 activities were defined in the presence of selective inhibitors. The natural PLA2 activity, as well as each subtype of PLA2 activity was elevated in each cancer group as compared to healthy controls. PLA2 activities were increased in late stage vs. early stage cases in CRC. PLA2 activities were not influenced by sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, or body-mass index (BMI). Samples from the two independent sites confirmed the results. Plasma PLA2 activities had approximately 70% specificity and sensitivity to detect cancer. The marker and targeting values of PLA2 activity have been suggested.

Only in recent years have phospholipase A2 enzymes (PLA2s) emerged as cancer targets. In this work, we report the first detection of elevated PLA2 activities in plasma from patients with colorectal, lung, pancreatic, and bladder cancers as compared to healthy controls. Independent sets of clinical plasma samples were obtained from two different sites. The first set was from patients with colorectal cancer (CRC; n = 38) and healthy controls (n = 77). The second set was from patients with lung (n = 95), bladder (n = 31), or pancreatic cancers (n = 38), and healthy controls (n = 79). PLA2 activities were analyzed by a validated quantitative fluorescent assay method and subtype PLA2 activities were defined in the presence of selective inhibitors. The natural PLA2 activity, as well as each subtype of PLA2 activity was elevated in each cancer group as compared to healthy controls. PLA2 activities were increased in late stage vs. early stage cases in CRC. PLA2 activities were not influenced by sex, smoking, alcohol consumption, or body-mass index (BMI). Samples from the two independent sites confirmed the results. Plasma PLA2 activities had approximately 70% specificity and sensitivity to detect cancer. The marker and targeting values of PLA2 activity have been suggested.