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.