mutations are associated with less aggressive disease across all bladder cancers, although this is not necessarily the case among advanced tumors

mutations are associated with less aggressive disease across all bladder cancers, although this is not necessarily the case among advanced tumors. mutations are associated with excess growth in other tissues (e.g., nevi in skin) (21). Germline mutations are paternally inherited and are associated with advanced paternal age (22). The introduction of improved clinical genetic testing techniques in oncology has facilitated the discovery that gene alterations are implicated in a wide range of cancers [ Figure 1A , (23, 24)]. The prevalence of gene aberrations is highest in urothelial carcinomas (18% of cases), followed by uterine carcinosarcoma (14%), esophageal (5%), ovarian (5%), and endometrial (4%) cancers (23C25). FGFR3 signaling has been observed to overlap with known oncogenic pathways such as RAS/PI3K/ERK/AKT/EGFR and has been implicated in tumoral epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (26, 27). The role of gene in oncogenesis may even be at the pre-translational level: Has_circ_0068871, a circRNA product of gene transcription, is overexpressed in bladder cancer, and is associated with cancer cell proliferation and migration (28). Expression of the antisense transcript FGFR3-AS1, which increases stabilizes and promotes expression of mRNA, and which is overexpressed in urothelial tumors, is associated with tumor invasiveness, proliferation, and motility (29). The most common mutation, S249C, likely develops through an apoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme, catalytic polypeptide-like (APOBEC)-mediated mutagenic mechanism (30). FGFR3-transforming acid coiled coil 3 (TACC3) fusions, which result in constitutive signaling, represent another frequent source of gene aberration (31). Open in a separate window Figure 1 (A) gene alterations by cancer type based on available data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (only recurrent mutations and fusionsthose comprising in 1% of mutations/fusionswere included). Potential mechanisms of improved response rate to FGFR3-targeted therapy in the post-immunotherapy setting include (B) primary immunotherapy resistance, (C) secondary immunotherapy resistance, and (D) enrichment of patients with immunotherapy-resistant tumors in trials of FGFR3-targeted therapy. As prognostic indicators, gene alterations are generally associated with lower grade and stage among all urothelial Isomalt bladder carcinomas (32). Among non-muscle invasive cases, 49-84% express mutations Isomalt are associated with lower disease-specific survival (32C34). Among American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) 8th edition T1 tumors, expression is associated with lower grade tumor and lower risk of cancer progression (35). gene mutations, amplifications, and fusions are associated with luminal-papillary subtype of urothelial cancer, which itself is associated with Alarelin Acetate non-muscle invasive disease and favorable prognosis compared with other subtypes (13, 36, 37). However, in spite of the general association of alterations with favorable characteristics, there is no evidence to suggest that gene alterations correlate with a less aggressive phenotype once urothelial carcinoma has become advanced. In fact, gene alterations are associated with less favorable outcomes in the context of chemotherapy for advanced disease (38, 39). The identification of as an oncogenic driver in urothelial cancer has led to the development of FGFR3-targeting therapeutics [ Table 1 , (40)]. While the dovitinib, which targets FGFR3, among other tyrosine kinases, showed poor single-agent activity in an unselected urothelial cancer patient population, using pan-FGFR inhibitors with greater target affinity in genomically selected populations has proven to be a more promising approach (41, 42). This observation may reflect a compensation of other FGFR isotypes when therapeutics target FGFR3 on its own. The FGFR1-4 inhibitor erdafitinib is the sole FGFR-targeting agent to which the United States Food and Drug Administration has granted regulatory Isomalt approval to date. Erdafitinib is indicated for patients with or mutations and fusions may be associated exclusively with tumors that exhibit a lymphocyte-excluded phenotype. Moreover, the degree of expression predicts lymphocyte exclusion (13). Wnt/-catenin signaling, which is associated with non-T-cell-inflamed tumors both in bladder cancers and across most solid cancers, has been shown to overlap with FGFR3 signaling (13, 53C55). In lung cancer models, FGFR3 inhibition enhances the effect of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) blockade (56). However, evidence that pathways work in opposition to immune activity is not uniform: amplifications are associated with decreased anti-inflammatory M2 macrophage bladder tumor infiltration.