Molecular profile of bladder cancer progression to clinically aggressive subtypes

Abstract

Bladder cancer is a histologically and clinically heterogenous disease. Most bladder cancers are urothelial carcinomas, which frequently develop distinct histological subtypes. Several urothelial carcinoma histological subtypes, such as micropapillary, plasmacytoid, small-cell carcinoma and sarcomatoid, show highly aggressive behaviour and pose unique challenges in diagnosis and treatment. Comprehensive genomic characterizations of the urothelial carcinoma subtypes have revealed that they probably arise from a precursor subset of conventional urothelial carcinomas that belong to different molecular subtypes — micropapillary and plasmacytoid subtypes develop along the luminal pathway, whereas small-cell and sarcomatoid subtypes evolve along the basal pathway. The subtypes exhibit distinct genomic alterations, but in most cases their biological properties seem to be primarily determined by specific gene expression profiles, including epithelial–mesenchymal transition, urothelial-to-neural lineage plasticity, and immune infiltration with distinct upregulation of immune regulatory genes. These breakthrough studies have transformed our view of bladder cancer histological subtype biology, generated new hypotheses for therapy and chemoresistance, and facilitated the discovery of new therapeutic targets. In this Review, the authors describe the molecular profile of bladder cancer progression associated with the subtypes of this disease and comment on their potential diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic importance.