Detection of prostate cancer-specific transcripts in extracellular vesicles isolated from post-DRE urine.

Background: The measurement of gene expression in post-digital rectal examination (DRE) urine specimens provides a non-invasive method to determine a patient's risk of prostate cancer. Many currently available assays use whole urine or cell pellets for the analysis of prostate cancer-associated genes, although the use of extracellular vesicles (EVs) has also recently been of interest. We investigated the expression of prostate-, kidney-, and bladder-specific transcripts and known prostate cancer biomarkers in urine EVs.

Elevated preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio may be associated with decreased overall survival in patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma undergoing cytoreductive nephrectomy.

Objective: Inflammatory serum markers have proven to be a powerful predictive tool of patient prognosis in cancer treatment for a wide variety of solid organ malignancies, predominantly in the context of localized disease. In this study we evaluated the preoperative neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR) as a predictive tool in patients with metastatic clear cell renal cell carcinoma (RCC).

Methods: Sixty-four patients with metastatic clear cell RCC undergoing nephrectomy were selected.