CK20 expression in exfoliated urothelial cells of bladder cancer

Objective To study whether CK20 expression could be served as a noninvasive test for detecting and monitoring bladder cancer. Methods Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT PCR) was used to determine the expression of CK20 in cells collected from the urine of 10 healthy volunteers,41 patients with bladder cancer and in 20 hematuria patients with bladder cancer excluded. Results CK20 amplification band (370bp) was obtained with mRNA extracted from TCC cells of bladder cancer. Of 41 patients with bladder cancer, 37 specimen were positive.No false positive cases were found in the 10 healthy controls and only in 3 of the 20 hematuric cases.Of the 3 false positive, 2 had pelvic cancer and 1 chronic inflammation. CK20 was positive in 23 of the 25 G 1 patients,in 8 of the 9 G 2 patients,and in 6 of the 7 G 3 patients. Conclusions The preliminary results showed that CK20 might be a potential biomarker for the noninvasive detection of bladder cancer by means of assaying urothelial cells from the voided urine specimen with RT PCR.