Bladder Cancer

Type

Cancer type (urothelial carcinoma)

Role in Clonal Evolution

Bladder cancer is one of the six cancer types identified by Burns, Temiz, & Harris (2013) as showing convergent evidence for APOBEC3B-dependent mutagenesis: elevated APOBEC3B expression, strong C/G mutation bias (~90% of mutations at C/G pairs), cytosine mutation contexts matching recombinant APOBEC3B’s biochemical signature, and kataegis events. Among all 19 cancer types analyzed, bladder cancer showed the most extreme C/G mutation bias not attributable to UV radiation — implicating enzymatic DNA deamination as the dominant mutational process (burns2013-apobec3b-multiple-cancers). The APOBEC-driven mutational landscape of bladder cancer makes it a model system for studying enzymatic mutagenesis as a source of clonal diversity.

Key References

• burns2013-apobec3b-multiple-cancers — Pan-cancer evidence for APOBEC3B mutagenesis; bladder cancer identified as a signature cancer type
• pcawg2020-pan-cancer-analysis — Pan-cancer genomic analysis including bladder cancer