Simple Cancer Biomarkers are Inadequate to Enable Personalized Medicine

It seems that researchers are finding that using single cancer biomarkers to develop companion diagnostics (CDx’s) to be used with future targeted therapeutics is very challenging. An article in the November 15 issue of Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News, called Traversing the Cancer Biomarker Labyrinth, by Kathy Liszewski, is a very interesting read.

Apparently progress in this field has slowed in finding clinically useful biomarkers for diagnostics and making other tests that guide doctors for disease prognosis and prediction. Researchers are using a variety of reductionist technical approaches that range from analysis of certain glycans, key microRNAs, and epigenetic changes, to big data analysis of massive data stores of genomic data to tease out more clues to what is going on in cancers.

Scientists seek to develop early detection blood tests that can detect cancers of interest.  Such a blood test could be considered a ‘liquid biopsy’ and might include a panel of a dozen or more miRNAs that represent a biomarker signature.  An oncologist might one day be enabled to quickly screen certain patients with a blood test that would help them diagnose, stage or predict the potential outcome of a cancer.