Prognostic Value of Beta-Tubulin-3 and c-Myc in Muscle Invasive Urothelial Carcinoma of the Bladder

Background To date, putative prognostic biomarkers have shown limited utility from the clinical perspective for bladder urothelial carcinoma. Herein, the expression of beta-tubulin-3 and c-Myc was evaluated to determine their prognostic potential. Methods In formalin fixed-paraffin embedded blocks, immunohistochemical expression of c-Myc and beta-tubulin-3 was evaluated. H score ranging from 0 to 300 was obtained by multiplying the percentage of positive cells by intensity (0–3); c-Myc and beta-tubulin-3 expression was defined: 0: negative, 1: weakly positive, 2: strongly positive. Results beta-tubulin-3 and c-Myc immunoexpression was available for 46 cases. At the univariate analysis, node-involvement, beta-tubulin-3 and c-Myc overexpression discriminate shorter DFS (HR 2.19, p = 0.043; HR 3.10, p = 0.24 and HR 3.05, p = 0.011, respectively); 2-yrs DFS log-rank analysis according to low versus high level of immunoexpression were statistically significant; beta-tubulin-3, 53% low vs 12.7% high (p = value 0.02) and c-Myc 28 low vs 8 high (p-value 0.007). Patients displaying negative beta-tubulin-3/c-Myc had statistically significant better 2-yrs DFS than those with mixed expression or double positivity (54.5% versus 18.7% versus 0%, log-rank p = 0.006). Conclusions c-Myc and beta-tubulin-3 show improvement for prognostic risk stratification in patients with muscle invasive bladder urothelial carcinoma. These molecular pathways may also be candidate to improve predictiveness to targeted therapies.