Diagnostic and Prognostic Implications of FGFR3/Ki67 Papillary Bladder Cancers.

Prognostic/therapeutic stratification of papillary urothelial cancers is solely based upon histology, despite activated FGFR3-signaling was found to be associated with low grade tumors and favorable outcome. However, there are FGFR3-overexpressing tumors showing high proliferation-a paradox of coexisting favorable and adverse features. Therefore, our study aimed to decipher the relevance of FGFR3-overexpression/proliferation for histopathological grading and risk stratification. = 142 ( = 82 pTa, = 42 pT1, = 18 pT2-4) morphologically G1⁻G3 tumors were analyzed for immunohistochemical expression of FGFR3 and Ki67. Mutation analysis of and and FISH for amplification and rearrangement was performed. SPSS 23.0 was used for statistical analysis. Overall FGFR3/Ki67 status ( = 58) resulted in a reduced ∆mean progression-free survival (PFS) ( < 0.01) of 63.92 months, and shorter progression-free survival ( < 0.01; mean PFS: 55.89 months) in pTa tumors ( = 50). / double mutations led to a reduced ∆mean PFS ( < 0.01) of 80.30 months in all tumors, and / pTa tumors presented a dramatically reduced PFS ( < 0.001; mean PFS: 5.00 months). Our results identified FGFR3/Ki67 papillary pTa tumors as a subgroup with poor prognosis and encourage histological grading as high grade tumors. Tumor grading should possibly be augmented by immunohistochemical stainings and suitable clinical surveillance by endoscopy should be performed.