Education, Training, and Communications

PCR-based TERT Promoter Assays Aid in Bladder Cancer Diagnosis

Oct 30, 2019

Alex TaylorOur department's clinical resident Alex Taylor, MD, joined postdoctoral fellow Rahul Mannon, PhD, and other researchers from the Department of Pathology and the Michigan Center for Translational Pathology, who found that patients with a long-standing history of prostate cancer and other prostatic issues can find difficulty getting a diagnosis of bladder cancer. PCR-based TERT promoter assays were used as essential ancillary tools in reaching a final diagnosis. This is important as spatially, topographically, and temporally multi-focal and multi-differentiating urothelial carcinomas can demonstrate preservation of TERT promoter mutations, which in turn carries therapeutic connotations.

Published in Pathology Research and Practice, September 21, 2019, the abstract is available through PubMed at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov.