Immunohistochemical expression of stem cell markers ALDH1 and CD44 in urothelial carcinoma of the urinary bladder.

Bladder cancer is the 10th most common cancer. Egyptian men with bladder cancer have the greatest mortality rates, twice as high as the greatest rate in Europe and 4 times greater than in the USA. The existence of bladder CSCs has been suggested as a possible reason for the failure of adjuvant treatment and poor oncological control outcomes. The discovery of therapies targeting CSCs will achieve better treatment effects at a lower cost. This study aimed to study ALDH1A1 and CD44 expression among urothelial cancer patients. Sixty cases of urothelial carcinoma were studied using ALDH1A1 and CD44 immunohistochemistry, and their expression was correlated with different clinicopathologic parameters. There was only a statistically significant relationship between presence of bilharziasis and expression of ALDH1. No statistically significant relationship is found between ALDH1 or CD44 expression and age, gender, tumor grade, histological variants of urothelial carcinoma, depth of invasion (T), presence of carcinoma in situ in adjacent mucosa, lymphovascular invasion, lymph node involvement, and tumor recurrence. ALDH1 and CD44 stem cell marker expression is related to at least one clinicopathological parameter of urinary bladder urothelial carcinoma, and so they could be considered as prognostic markers. This is worthy to be further evaluated and studied on a larger number of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]