Detailed clinical data of The Cancer Genome Atlas muscle-invasive bladder cancer database with focus on gender and ethnic stratification

Introduction: Bladder cancer is one of the most common neoplasms, especially in men. About 25% of the patients present with the more aggressive type of bladder cancer, the muscle-invasive type, which carries a significant risk of death. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) had recently published extensive genomic data of 412 muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) patients, with modest clinical information. The aim of the current study was to analyze several aspects of the clinical data of TCGA bladder cancer database. Methods: Using NCI Genomic Data Commons portal and cBioPortal, we extracted data on 412 patients with MIBC from the TCGA database. We then analyzed and statistically compared these data using different statistical methods. Aside from clinical data, we also extracted data on disease-free and overall survival. Results: The database included 104 female patients and 297 male patients. The vast majority were Caucasians (79.0%), followed by Asians (11%) and African-Americans (5.5%). The female group was older than the male group (70.0 vs 67.3 years, P=0.02). Incidental prostate cancer was seen in 82 male patients (27.6%). Kaplan-Meier curves for disease-free survival and overall survival showed no difference between male and female patients, and no difference between the three ethnics groups. Conclusions: TCGA provides an invaluable source for genomic alterations of MIBC. In this study, we have shown that it also provides adequate clinical information that can be compared with genomic data and future studies. No statistically significant differences were shown in disease-free and overall survival between male and female patients in the TCGA MIBC database.