Background/Aims: Survivin mRNA in urine was measured to detect newly diagnosed bladder cancer, bladder cancer recurrence and bladder cancer in patients with hematuria. Methods: We have investigated urinary survivin mRNA of 118 voided urine specimens, including 24 patients with bladder cancer, 50 with bladder cancer history, 68 not known to harbor bladder cancer, and 55 with hematuria using quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. β-Actin mRNA expression was also examined and used as an endogenous control to ensure validity of the assay for each sample. Results: The survivin expression in urological patient urine had sensitivities and specificities for all patients of 79 and 93%, for detection of newly diagnosed bladder cancer 83 and 95%, for bladder cancer recurrence 82 and 90%, and for bladder cancer in patients with hematuria 80 and 90%. Conclusion: Our results indicate that quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction of urinary survivin is a sensitive, noninvasive and highly specific assay to detect both newly diagnosed bladder cancer and bladder cancer recurrence. Furthermore, this assay may be useful in stratifying the hematuria population in urological practice.

Mesothelioma is a highly progressive tumor with a poor prognosis. In this article, the authors give a thorough introduction into and evaluation of the MESOMARK(®) in vitro test - the only blood test for the management of patients with mesothelioma approved by the US FDA. In Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, the test is approved or licensed for the measurement of the soluble mesothelin, also termed as soluble mesothelin-related peptides. In the US, it is approved for the monitoring of patients with epithelioid and biphasic malignant mesothelioma.

Human epididymis protein 4 (HE4) has been shown to be a promising serum biomarker for epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC). Recently, Hellstrom et al. reported the detection of HE4 in urine as a biomarker for ovarian neoplasms (Cancer Lett.2010;296:43–8). We investigated the feasibility of urinary HE4 in detection of EOC in a pilot study. METHODS: This retrospective study measured the HE4 levels in urine samples obtained from an institutional review board-approved sample bank. HE4 was measured with HE4 EIA (Fujirebio Diagnostics, Inc.). Creatinine was measured via colorimetric determination by the Jaffe Reaction and used to normalize the HE4 levels. Clinical diagnosis of the subjects was based on the pathological diagnosis. Single-point urine samples were analyzed from 232 subjects; 72 with EOC or low malignant potential tumors and 160 with benign disease. RESULTS: The medians of HE4 levels in subjects with EOC and with benign disease were 29833 pmol/L (95% Confidence Interval (CI): 21185–54728) and 8515 pmol/L (95% CI: 7077–9314) respectively. The medians of HE4/Creatinine ratios in subjects with EOC and with benign disease were 420 (95% CI: 269–491) and 75 (95% CI: 68–83), respectively. Both the medians of HE4 levels and HE4/Creatinine ratios in EOC subjects were significantly higher than that in subjects with benign disease (P<0.0001 in Median test). Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that areas under the curve (AUC) were 0.87 for HE4/Creatinine ratio (95% CI = 0.81–0.92) and 0.83 for HE4 level (95% CI = 0.76–0.89). There was no significant difference between the AUC for HE4 level and HE4/Creatinine ratio (P>0.05). Using the shoulder point of each ROC curve as the cut-off, the cut-off values were 152.5 for HE4/Creatinine ratio and 19161 pmol/L for HE4 level respectively. The sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value and negative predictive value at the set cut-off values were 70.8% (95% CI = 58.9% – 81.0%), 93.1% (95% CI = 88.0% – 96.5%), 82.3% and 87.6% for HE4/Creatinine ratio, and 65.3% (95% CI = 53.1% – 76.1%), 89.4% (95% CI = 83.5% – 93.7%), 73.4% and 85.1% for HE4 level, respectively. Concordance rates versus clinical diagnosis were 86.2% for HE4/creatinine ratio and 81.9% for HE4 level. CONCLUSIONS: This pilot study demonstrated the utility of urinary HE4 level alone or HE4/Creatinine ratio as potential biomarkers for the detection of EOC. The HE4/Creatinine ratio appeared to be better than the HE4 level in correlating with the clinical pathological diagnosis of EOC. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-451. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-LB-451

e15565 Background: CYFRA 21-1 is a known lung cancer biomarker. In subjects with ovarian cancer (OC) versus those with benign gynecological diseases, serum CYFRA 21-1 was reported sensitivities (SN) of 44% and 41% at specificity (SP) of 95% for OC detection using an ELISA assay by Hasholzner U (1994) and Tempfer C (1998), respectively. Nolen B (2010) reported a SN of 84.1% and 85.8% and a SP of 85% and 79.3% with a combination of CYFRA 21-1, CA 125 and HE4 using a multiplex bead-based immunoassay in a training and validation set, respectively. We carried out a cohort study to evaluate the serum CYFRA 21-1 as an ovarian cancer biomarker and compared it with ROMA (Risk of Ovarian Malignancy Algorithm), an FDA-cleared ovarian cancer algorithm. Methods: ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1 assay was used to measure the levels of serum CYFRA 21-1. Single point serum samples from 170 female subjects with a pelvic mass were randomly selected from an archive cohort of female subjects. Among the 170 subjects, 47 had OC (42 with epithelial OC and 5 with low malignant potential tumor) and 123 with benign gynecological diseases. ROMA values were obtained with HE4 EIA and ARCHITECT CA 125 II. Results: For ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1, the ROC-AUC, cut-off, SN, SP, PPV and NPV were 86%, 1.8 ng/mL, 70.2% (95% CI: 55.1% to 82.7%), 95.1% (95% CI: 89.7% to 98.2%), 84.6% and 89.3%, repectively. For ROMA algorithm, the ROC-AUC, cut-off, SN, SP, PPV and NPV were 92%, 2.44, 89.4% (95% CI: 76.9% to 96.5%), 84.6% (95% CI: 76.9% to 90.4%), 68.9% and 95.4%, repectively. Chi-square test showed an SN for ROMA was significantly higher than that of ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1 (p < 0.05), and SP for ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1 was significantly higher than that of ROMA (p < 0.01). Conclusions: In distinguishing OC from benign gynecological diseases, ROMA algorithm appears to be more sensitive than serum ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1 (p < 0.05), and serum ARCHITECT CYFRA 21-1 appears to be more specific than (p < 0.01) in this cohort study.