Evaluation of androgen receptor and androgen receptor splice-variant 7 in bladder cancer; a novel approach into an ancient topic.

Purpose: The contribution of androgen receptors (AR) on bladder cancer has been demonstrated in pre-clinical studies, however in clinical studies, only the canonical AR (AR-FL) protein was measured by immunohistochemistry and conflicting results were obtained. To get better insight into the alterations of AR signalling, we used western blotting (WB) method and simultaneously measured both mRNA and protein levels of AR-FL and AR-V7.

Methods: 23 naive non-muscle invasive bladder cancer patients and 12 healthy individuals were included.