Prognostic Role of Survivin and Macrophage Infiltration Quantified on Protein and mRNA Level in Molecular Subtypes Determined by RT-qPCR of KRT5, KRT20, and ERBB2 in Muscle-Invasive Bladder Cancer Treated by Adjuvant Chemotherapy.

For muscle-invasive bladder cancer patients, the proliferative activity as determined by the nuclear staining of survivin or RT-qPCR on the basis of molecular subtype characteristics outperforms single marker detections and single technology approaches. Infiltration by macrophages detected by IHC or PCR is associated with worse outcome in defined subsets of tumors. The limitations of this study are the retrospective nature and the limited number of patients. However, the number of molecular markers has been restricted and based on predefined assumptions, which resulted in the dissection of muscle-invasive disease into tumor-biological axes of high prognostic relevance, which warrant further investigation and validation.