A Pilot Study on the Potential of RNA-Associated to Urinary Vesicles as a Suitable Non-Invasive Source for Diagnostic Purposes in Bladder Cancer

Bladder cancer is one of the most common cancers and, together with prostate carcinoma, accounts for the majority of the malignancies of the genitourinary tract. Since prognosis ameliorates with early detection, it will be beneficial to have a repertoire of diagnostic markers that could complement the current diagnosis protocols. Recently, cell-secreted extracellular vesicles have received great interest as a source of low invasive disease biomarkers because they are found in many body fluids, including urine. The current work describes a pilot study to generate an array-based catalogue of mRNA associated to urinary vesicles, and also a comparison with samples obtained from bladder cancer patients. After an analysis of presence/absence of transcripts in bladder cancer EVs, a list of genes was selected for further validation using PCR technique. We found four genes differentially expressed in cancer samples. LASS2 and GALNT1 were present in cancer patients, while ARHGEF39 and FOXO3 were found only in non-cancer urinary vesicles. Previous studies have pointed to the involvement of those genes in tumour progression and metastasis.