The long-term prognostic value of survivin expressing circulating tumor cells in patients with high-risk non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC)

OBJECTIVES: Long-term follow-up study to evaluate the impact on disease-free survival and cancer-specific survival of survivin expression in tissue and CTCs from T1G3 bladder cancer patients.

PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study was conducted using tumor tissue and blood samples from 54 patients with a primary diagnosis of T1G3 NMIBC. Survivin was evaluated by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction in tumor tissues. CTCs were isolated from blood by CELLection™ Dynabeads (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA, USA). Cells were lysed and cDNA was synthesized and analysed for the expression of CD45, CK8 and survivin. The endpoints of this long-termanalysis were disease-free survival, DFS and cancer-specific survival, CSS.

RESULTS: Here, we report that, at 9 years of median follow-up, disease-free survival and cancer-specific survival are both significantly influenced by the expression of survivin in tumor tissue (p = 0.006), by the presence of CTCs (p < 0.0001) and by the expression of survivin in CTCs (p < 0.0001).

CONCLUSION: The statistically significant impact of survivin expressing CTCs on cancer-specific survival that we observed might be interpreted as the result of the persistence of a subpopulation of highlander cells in the blood of T1G3 bladder patients over time.