Interestingly, both Rb and p16 proteins were inversely correlated with c-myc in both SBT and NSBT. A recent study [31] found that the mechanism of Rb inactivation is through hyperphosphorylation, which results from loss of p16 expression. Bcl-2 protein was similar to that of p53. It was higher in SBT than in NSBT, in SBT/NSBT than in SC/NSC, and in SC/NSC than CTL. And it was associated

with SCC SBT and high grade invasive SBT and NSBT. Moreover, it was not associated with staging, presentation or TCC NSBT. Accordingly, bcl-2 proved to be a useful discriminatory factor between SBT and NSBT, cystitis and bladder cancer, and cancer/cystitis and CTL. This study showed that bcl-2, or Doramapimod loss of apoptotic potential, increases steadily with bladder chronic inflammation and with bladder cancer favoring SBT on NSBT. These findings are in agreement with [24] who stated that the positive immunostaining of bcl-2 was observed in 69% of bladder cancers where 75% of patients were with high-grade tumors. In addition, the current study supports check details a recent report [32] stating that bcl-2 is of little prognostic value. However, our findings contradict another report [23] which showed that bcl-2 expression was only 20% in schistosomal bladder cancer and it has no relationship with tumor grade. On the other hand, the current study confirmed the presence of significant direct correlation between bcl-2 and p53 which supports the conclusions of

another report [16] stating that the loss of p53 function enhances

the expression of bcl-2, by relieving it from the transcriptional repression of the wild type p53 protein. Regarding oncogenes, c-myc was higher in SBT than in NSBT, higher in SBT/NSBT than in other find more groups. It was associated with tumor grade, invasiveness, and late stages in both SBT and NSBT. It was the only factor associated with tumor invasiveness, grade, and prognosis as well as it proved to be a good discriminatory factor between SBT and NSBT and between bladder cancer and cystitis/CTL groups. These findings are in agreement with [33] who showed that 58% of bladder cancer patients were c-myc positive and 59% of the positive cases were of muscle-invasive tumors. However unlike the results of our study, they concluded that c-myc over-expression did not correlate with tumor grade or tumor progression while another study [34] found C-X-C chemokine receptor type 7 (CXCR-7) that 34% of patients had positive c-myc which was associated with tumor grade but with no prognostic value. Unfortunately, no previous study was conducted on the association of c-myc with SBT to compare with. The current study might be the first to investigate the role of c-myc in SBT and NSBT and might be the first to relate c-myc with the clinicopathological criteria of bladder cancer. Regarding EGFR, this oncogene increased significantly from CTL towards NSC, SC, NSBT, and SBT. Therefore EGFR could be used as a reliable discriminatory factor for the all studied groups.