The Role of Pparg in Urothelial Carinoma

Ting Wei Xiang

Bladder cancer is currently the 6th most common cancer in the United States, resulting in 17,000 deaths annually. Clinically, bladder cancers are mostly urothelial carcinoma, classified as either non-muscle invasive bladder cancer (NMIBC) or muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC), with the latter having a 5-year survival rate of merely 50%. With recent advances in next-generation sequencing, several international consortia have elucidated molecular subtypes of MIBC. The two major subtypes of MIBCs are basal and luminal; the basal subtype frequently exhibits hallmarks of squamous differentiation and highly expressed basal markers (CD44, KRT14, KRT6A, KRT6B). Tumors of the luminal subtype have papillary morphology and highly express differentiation-associated luminal markers (e.g., KRT20, PPARG, UPKs, and FOXA1). Notably, the transcription factor Peroxisome Proliferator Activated...