This book is a printed edition of the Special Issue 2Diagnostic, Prognostic and Predictive Biological Markers in Bladder Cancer – Illumination of a Vision" that was published in IJMS

After our successful first Special Issue about bladder cancer, we proceeded with the second issue. Again, many international scientists submitted their newest research results in that extremely interesting field and followed our call for submissions. It is not only the collection and combination of old and new markers that could develop new possibilities, but also the focus on different classifications and sub-classifications that will unveil new ways in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. It seems that the two established diagnostic tools will still play an important role, but new markers and diagnostics tools will present more detailed and more differentiated possibilities in the treatment of urinary bladder cancer. This second Special Issue is full of scientific results that could provide new ways to help patients with instruments for early diagnostics and with predictive and prognostic markers on their way to finding new and personalized strategies for therapy. The editors thank all of the submitting authors for their efforts and time spent on each manuscript. We hope that this Special Issue will prove useful to research work in bladder cancer in the future. We hope that many talented researchers will use multiple forms of art to improve their professional successes and to ameliorate diagnostics and therapy in bladder cancer.

After our successful first Special Issue about bladder cancer, we proceeded with the second issue. Again, many international scientists submitted their newest research results in that extremely interesting field and followed our call for submissions. It is not only the collection and combination of old and new markers that could develop new possibilities, but also the focus on different classifications and sub-classifications that will unveil new ways in diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. It seems that the two established diagnostic tools will still play an important role, but new markers and diagnostics tools will present more detailed and more differentiated possibilities in the treatment of urinary bladder cancer. This second Special Issue is full of scientific results that could provide new ways to help patients with instruments for early diagnostics and with predictive and prognostic markers on their way to finding new and personalized strategies for therapy. The editors thank all of the submitting authors for their efforts and time spent on each manuscript. We hope that this Special Issue will prove useful to research work in bladder cancer in the future. We hope that many talented researchers will use multiple forms of art to improve their professional successes and to ameliorate diagnostics and therapy in bladder cancer.

This Special Issue has been introduced with the aim of offering the possibility to publish new research results from old and new pioneers in the field of bladder cancer basic research. While editing this Special Issue we learned that an enormous enthusiasm is necessary to go on in bladder cancer research. In our eyes, bladder cancer is on one hand a very heterogenous malignancy, which is what makes it so difficult to focus on only one bladder cancer marker in bladder cancer diagnostics and follow-up. On the other hand, it is very important to find prognostic and predictive factors for bladder cancer due to its high incidence and its enormous costs, as one of the most expensive malignancies in the world. Finding and developing new bladder cancer markers is still a very dynamic field. Because there are many of these markers, it is impossible to report all of them. This Special Issue attempts to highlight the role of bladder cancer markers in diagnosis, and the most important biomarkers that have been recently studied and reported. This Special Issue highlights some of the most important markers. Further determination of recurrence and progression markers will contribute to establishing better treatments for individual patients. Molecular staging of urological tumors will allow the selection of cases that will require systemic treatment. It is necessary and important to integrate basic and clinical research under the same objectives.

Biomarkers are of critical medical importance for oncologists, allowing them to predict and detect disease and to determine the best course of action for cancer patient care. Prognostic markers are used to evaluate a patient’s outcome and cancer recurrence probability after initial interventions such as surgery or drug treatments and, hence, to select follow-up and further treatment strategies. On the other hand, predictive markers are increasingly being used to evaluate the probability of benefit from clinical intervention(s), driving personalized medicine. Evolving technologies and the increasing availability of “multiomics” data are leading to the selection of numerous potential biomarkers, based on DNA, RNA, miRNA, protein, and metabolic alterations within cancer cells or tumor microenvironment, that may be combined with clinical and pathological data to greatly improve the prediction of both cancer progression and therapeutic treatment responses. However, in recent years, few biomarkers have progressed from discovery to become validated tools to be used in clinical practice. This Special Issue comprises eight review articles and five original studies on novel potential prognostic and predictive markers for different cancer types.

This collection of 25 research papers comprised of 22 original articles and 3 reviews is brought together from international leaders in bioinformatics and biostatistics. The collection highlights recent computational advances that improve the ability to analyze highly complex data sets to identify factors critical to cancer biology. Novel deep learning algorithms represent an emerging and highly valuable approach for collecting, characterizing and predicting clinical outcomes data. The collection highlights several of these approaches that are likely to become the foundation of research and clinical practice in the future. In fact, many of these technologies reveal new insights about basic cancer mechanisms by integrating data sets and structures that were previously immiscible. Accordingly, the series presented here bring forward a wide range of artificial intelligence approaches and statistical methods that can be applied to imaging and genomics data sets to identify previously unrecognized features that are critical for cancer. Our hope is that these articles will serve as a foundation for future research as the field of cancer biology transitions to integrating electronic health record, imaging, genomics and other complex datasets in order to develop new strategies that improve the overall health of individual patients.

An intuitive approach to machine learning covering key concepts, real-world applications, and practical Python coding exercises.

This book covers the latest advances in non-muscle invasive bladder cancer care. It provides a review of the available evidence base for the efficacy of a range of therapeutic techniques, diagnostic procedures and risk factors. Management of Non-Muscle Invasive Bladder Cancer features detailed guidance in uniformly formatted chapters on how to properly apply a range of available therapeutic treatments relevant for patient care. It is a valuable resource for all trainee and practising medical professionals who treat these patients.

Many people naturally assume that the claims made for foods and nutritional supplements have the same degree of scientific grounding as those for medication, but that is not always the case. The IOM recommends that the FDA adopt a consistent scientific framework for biomarker evaluation in order to achieve a rigorous and transparent process.

This book will serve as a primer for both laboratory and field scientists who are shaping the emerging field of molecular epidemiology. Molecular epidemiology utilizes the same paradigm as traditional epidemiology but uses biological markers to identify exposure, disease or susceptibility. Schulte and Perera present the epidemiologic methods pertinent to biological markers. The book is also designed to enumerate the considerations necessary for valid field research and provide a resource on the salient and subtle features of biological indicators.