Novel Urinary Liquid Biopsy Biomarkers and Their Role in Detecting Genitourinary Cancers

Abstract

As liquid biopsy attracts more attention for the clinical detection and diagnosis of cancer, the need to establish reliable biomarkers has emerged. Plasma has received extensive study. However, for genitourinary (GU) cancers, urine can be the ideal body fluid. Urine can be collected in large quantities for frequent biomarker analysis and disease monitoring with relative ease. New biomarker studies are of great importance due to the limitations of the present diagnostic tests used for cancer detection and monitoring. Recently, many promising studies have investigated the role of cell-free DNA, DNA methylation, extracellular RNAs, and exosome cargos as biomarkers for GU cancer detection. This review explores the recent literature on the discovery of novel urinary biomarkers and their utility in detecting GU cancers. In small-scale studies, several novel biomarkers have shown preliminary evidence of superior clinical sensitivity and specificity compared to conventional GU cancer screening methods. With the use of these new urinary biomarkers, routine non-invasive screening and tumor monitoring may be possible.