Bladder cancer represents the fourth most common malignancy in men and the tenth most common in women, and approximately 20% of patients with this cancer die each year. When the disease is diagnosed and treated in the early stages, the chances of survival are good, indicating the importance of early detection for this cancer type.

Current approaches for detecting bladder cancer are invasive, costly or have limited sensitivity. A reliable, simple and non-invasive test is therefore urgently needed. One potential marker of bladder cancer is telomerase activity, which can be detected in urine samples using the highly sensitive telomeric repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) assay.

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