The nidus of the network in its current form dates back to the cooperative efforts of the Bladder Cancer Marker Network of the National Cancer Institute (NCI) that has been developing and assessing biomarkers for diagnostic and prognostic use for many years. Over the time, it has become obvious that both increased interest and activity in this area on a global scale warranted a meeting dedicated to this topic. As a result of the efforts of numerous investigators in this field, the First International Workshop on Diagnostic and Prognostic Markers in Bladder Cancer was held in Barcelona, Spain, in May 1997, and the Second International Workshop was held at the same venue in October 1998.

These two events ultimately lead to the founding of the International Bladder Cancer Network (IBCN), which evolved over the last years from a loose international and multidisciplinary network of friends and colleagues to an open formalized platform of those interested to foster our understanding on the use and implication of biomarkers into translational medicine for bladder cancer. Ever since, the meetings were conducted in its unique workshop format to maximize interaction among participants with the goal of providing a framework for increasingly productive activity in the area of bladder cancer markers.

To hear more about the history of the IBCN, listen to this interview with one of the founders of the IBCN, Prof. H. Barton Grossman