ORCID
- Richard Colling: 0000-0001-6344-9081
Abstract
BackgroundThe project ‘World Health Organization (WHO) Classification of Tumours (WCT): a Living Evidence Gap Map by Tumour Type’ applies the Evidence and Gap Map (EGM) methodology to systematically synthesise evidence to support iterative refinements of the WCT. As part of this work, we created the first EGM for the WCT of Urinary and Male Genital Tumors, covering clear cell renal cell carcinoma, non-clear cell renal cell carcinoma, glandular neoplasms of the prostate and urothelial tumours.MethodsSystematic searches in PubMed and Ovid Embase were conducted and harmonised to a 2020 to 2024 publication time period. Following title and abstract screening, reviewers coded and extracted data from the included records for tumour type, characteristic and study design using EPPI-Reviewer®. Levels of evidence were assigned applying the adapted Hierarchy of Research Evidence for Tumour Pathology and visualised with EPPI-Mapper®.ResultsOf 65,686 deduplicated records, 4,138 studies met inclusion criteria, generating 6,117 EGM entries across 30 tumour types. Evidence on histopathology (28.9%) and prognosis (28.2%) dominated the entries, while prediction was underrepresented (1.6%) or absent in several tumour types. High-level evidence accounted for 17.3% of entries overall, while low-level evidence prevailed across all groups (40.9% in urothelial tumours to 68.0% in non-clear cell renal cell carcinomas). Overall, of 180 tumour-type-by-characteristic EGM cells, 24.4% showed absolute gaps, 42.8% relative gaps, 2.8% synthesis gaps and 30.0% solid evidence.ConclusionsThe available evidence for urinary tract and male genital tumours is heterogeneous, with robust research in clear cell renal cell carcinoma contrasting with sparse predictive evidence and absolute gaps for rare and recently introduced tumour types. This map highlights targeted systematic reviews, cancer registry-based case accumulation and standardised use of WCT nomenclature as priorities for strengthening urological tumour classification.
DOI Link
Publication Date
2026-06-30
Publication Title
Open Research Europe
Deposit Date
2026-08-19
Funding
This work was funded by the European Commission within the WCT EVI MAP project [HORIZON grant number 101057127]. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
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Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Gruber, S., Worf, K., Trulson, I., Knoblauch, L., Gruber, T., Schwamborn, K., Campbell, F., Colling, R., Inskip, A., Plans-Beriso, E., Craciun, O., Chechlińska, M., Kowalewska, M., Maslova, K., Tan, P., Wijesinghe, H., Cree, I., Lokuhetty, D., Ruiz, B., & Holdenrieder, S. (2026) 'Mapping the evidence base of kidney, prostate and urinary tract tumours to inform the WHO classification of tumours', Open Research Europe, . Available at: 10.12688/openreseurope.23926.1
