UROSCAN and UROSCANSEQ: a large-scale multicenter effort towards translation of molecular bladder cancer subtypes into clinical practice – from biobank to RNA-sequencing in real time
Fredrik Liedberg, Johan Abrahamsson, Carina Bernardo, Mats Bläckberg, Anders Edsjö, Markus Heidenblad, Christer Larsson, Gottfrid Sjödahl, Pontus Eriksson
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Bladder cancer is molecularly one of the most heterogenous malignancies characterized by equally heterogenous clinical outcomes. Standard morphological assessment with pathology and added immunohistochemical analyses is unable to fully address the heterogeneity, but up to now treatment decisions have been made based on such information only. Bladder cancer molecular subtypes will likely provide means for a more personalized bladder cancer care. METHODS: To facilitate further development of bladder cancer molecular subtypes and clinical translation, the UROSCAN-biobank was initiated in 2013 to achieve systematic biobanking of preoperative blood and fresh frozen tumor tissue in a population-based setting. In a second phase, we established in 2018 a parallel logistic pipeline for molecular profiling by RNA-sequencing, to develop and validate clinical implementation of molecular subtyping and actionable molecular target identification in real-time. RESULTS: = 5). CONCLUSIONS: The UROSCAN-biobanking and UROSCANSEQ-infrastructure for molecular subtyping by real-time RNA-sequencing represents, to our knowledge, the largest effort of evaluating population-wide molecular classification of bladder cancer.