Genetics of urological cancers.

Investigations into inherited susceptibility to urological cancers have provided new insights into the clinical and molecular genetics of urological neoplasia. This review focuses on current knowledge of the genetics of renal, bladder, prostate and testicular neoplasia. Recent advances include (i) the isolation of the von Hippel-Lindau disease gene which is involved in the pathogenesis of familial and nonfamilial renal cancer, (ii) elucidation of the mechanism of multicentricity in bladder cancer, (iii) evidence that a significant proportion of early onset prostate cancer may be attributable to dominantly inherited susceptibility gene (or genes), and (iv) identification of specific cytogenetic and molecular events in the pathogenesis of testicular germ cell tumours.