External Validation Of IMP3 Expression As An Independent Prognostic Marker For Metastatic Progression And Death For Patients With Renal Carcinona

Main Category: Urology / Nephrology
Also Included In: Cancer / Oncology
Article Date: 16 Mar 2008 - 0:00 PDT

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UroToday.com - This trial was a validation of IMP3 as marker for the aggressiveness of renal cell carcinoma. It confirmed that IMP3 positivity can predict increased metastasis and decreased survival in renal cell carcinoma patients.

Validation studies are not widely performed or reported on biomarkers, but provide valuable insight on the importance of these markers on a larger scale. The main limitation of our study was the fact that the staining was performed at the original study institution. This was done mostly due to the fact that antibody was not commercially available. Ideally, for external validations, the staining should be performed at the validating institution. However, since the staining was interpreted by an independent pathologist blinded to patient outcome, we feel the potential bias is minimal.

We believe that high-quality validation studies should be more widespread in order to aid in the understanding of which biomarkers have the most clinical relevance. It is not the final step towards this goal, however. The next step has to be comparison studies of multiple markers in a single large group of patients in order to help define the relative importance of each biomarker compared to the whole. That has the potential to reduce the already vast field of biomarkers for renal cell carcinoma to several important ones that can make an impact on clinical practice.

Written by Nathan Hoffmann, MD, PhD, as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com. This initiative offers a method of publishing for the professional urology community. Authors are given an opportunity to expand on the circumstances, limitations, etc., of their research by referencing the published abstract.

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