Immunoexpression and prognostic role of hTERT and cyclin D1 in urothelial carcinoma

The aim was to investigate the expression of human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) and cyclin D1 in correlation with clinicopathologic features of urothelial carcinoma (UC). Tissue microarrays (TMA) were constructed from paraffin-embedded specimens of 94 UC patients and immunohistochemical staining was used. High hTERT expression was found in 50 (53%) of the 94 tumors and was significantly associated with tumor invasiveness and tumor grade (P=0.008 and 0.0190, respectively). High cyclin D1 expression was found in 69 (73%) of the 94 tumors and was significantly associated with non-invasiveness and smaller tumor size, but there was no correlation with tumor grade. Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with low hTERT and high cyclin D1 levels had longer local recurrence-free survival (P=0.0482 and 0.0123, respectively). In addition, patients with high cyclin D1 levels had longer disease-free survival (P=0.0195). In conclusion, this study demonstrated that hTERT and cyclin D1 may be of recurrence predictive value for UC, thus providing clinicians with ancillary information when deciding on suitable therapeutic strategies in UC.