Persistent uroplakin expression in advanced urothelial carcinomas: implications in urothelial tumor progression and clinical outcome

Ablation of Uroplakin III Gene Results in Small Urothelial Plaques, Urothelial Leakage, and Vesicoureteral Reflux

Urothelium synthesizes a group of integral membrane proteins called uroplakins, which form two-dimensional crystals (urothelial plaques) covering >90% of the apical urothelial surface. We show that the ablation of the mouse uroplakin III (UPIII) gene leads to overexpression, defective glycosylation, and abnormal targeting of uroplakin Ib, the presumed partner of UPIII. The UPIII-depleted urothe...

Myofibroblasts reaction in urothelial carcinomas.

The myofibroblast is a connective tissue cell with intermediate features between the fibroblast and the smooth muscle cell and unknown origin, which normally is present in only a few organs, but with increased incidence in malignancies. The patterns of myofibroblastic reaction may be synchronous, metachronous and mixed. The presence of the myofibroblasts has been demonstrated into the stroma of...

Bladder: Urothelial carcinomas

Uroplakin IIIb, a urothelial differentiation marker, dimerizes with uroplakin Ib as an early step of urothelial plaque assembly

Urothelial plaques consist of four major uroplakins (Ia, Ib, II, and III) that form two-dimensional crystals covering the apical surface of urothelium, and provide unique opportunities for studying membrane protein assembly. Here, we describe a novel 35-kD urothelial plaque-associated glycoprotein that is closely related to uroplakin III: they have a similar overall type 1 transmembrane topolog...

Clinical significance of Her2/neu overexpression in urothelial carcinomas.

HER2/neu is a defective transmembrane tyrosine kinase receptor, homologue to the epidermal growth factor receptor, showing overexpression in a large variety of tumor cells. There are no studies published so far regarding HER2/neu overexpression and sensitivity of the urothelial tumors of the urinary bladder to anti-HER2/neu therapy. There are a relatively high number of articles in the literatu...