Abstract: Background and purpose: Bladder cancer is the most common urological tumor, and its pathogenesis is still not fully understood. The study was aimed to observe the expressions of key genes in many tumor-associated signaling pathways in normal bladder tissue and bladder carcinoma, and to provide further evidence for the subsequent study of bladder cancer recurrence and metastasis. Methods: Twenty-seven cases of bladder cancer specimens were collected, and normal bladder tissues and bladder cancer tissues were distinguished by frozen section. Then, the expressions of 84 genes of cancer-related signaling pathways in bladder cancer tissues and normal bladder tissues were screened by Cancer Pathway Finder PCR Array produced by QIAGEN company. Results: Compared with the normal bladder tissues, the bladder carcinoma tissues had 8 up-regulated genes and 19 down-regulated genes. In this study, the impact of epithelial- mesenchymal transition (EMT) signaling pathway was selected as a research direction in which the GSC, KRT14, DSP were up-regulated, SNAI2, SNAI3 were down-regulated. Therefore GSC, KRT14, DSP, SNAI2 and SNAI3 were chosen as target genes, and verified by qRT-PCR in many examples. The result showed that the expressions of GSC gene in bladder cancer tissues were up-regulated, but with no statistical significance; KRT14, DSP expressions in bladder cancer were higher than those in normal bladder tissues (P<0.05); SNAI2, SNAI3 expressions in bladder cancer were lower than those in normal bladder tissues (P<0.05), and SNAI3 showed the most obvious expression differences. Conclusion: KRT14, DSP and SNAI3 may play an important role in bladder cancer’s occurrence, development and metastasis.

Key words: RT-PCR Array, Bladder cancer, Pathway