Pathology, Molecular Biology, and Prognosis of Penile Squamous Cell Carcinoma: What Can We Learn from the Specimen?

In the treatment of penile cancer, there is a need for prognostic and predictive factors allowing assessment of the likelihood of lymph node metastasis, as this would greatly facilitate clinical decision-making for invasive staging of inguinal nodes. Furthermore, systemic chemotherapy in metastatic disease has limited efficacy and more effective additional or second-line therapies are needed. There is a great interest in personalised and targeted therapies at present, but do we have any indications that these will be useful in penile cancer? This review examines the well-proven predictors of prognosis that pathologists can take from specimens, and reports which molecular markers are of proven value in penile cancer. (C) 2018 European Association of Urology. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.