IMPPC Fundación Institut de Medicina Predictiva i Personalitzada del Càncer

      Biomarkers

Biomarkers are very specific chemicals present in the body that can indicate genetic changes or changes in the pathways these changes control. The markers can be measured and provide information that can be used to identify if a disease process has started; exactly what process it is and what stage of development it is at. They can also be used to decide what treatment to apply and monitor its progress, and therefore predict the prognosis for the cancer patient.

Biomarkers are characteristics that can be measured objectively to give information that helps the physician diagnose a disease and make predictions about how it will develop. It will also help him or her to prescribe a treatment and monitors its progress. Biomarkers can be genetic, morphological or biochemical factors that can be measured.

In the case of cancer, a disease process in which a cascade of events is triggered, biomarkers can be indicators of changes at any one of the many stages from a change in the genetic material to a change in the proteins being produced in a cell. These changes taken together are used to provide the cancer signature, otherwise known as cancer profile, which is used to identify exactly which of the cancer illnesses a patient is suffering from. Some biomarkers will enable the identification of the stage that a patient's disease process has reached: initiation, promotion, progression, invasion or metastasis.

Use of Biomarkers
• Use at the screening stage to identify:
o Susceptibility - as predictors
o Presence of disease - as diagnostic tools
o Evolution - as prognostic tools
• Use in the search of new therapies
o Identification as a target for a specific drug
• Use at the treatment stage
o Choice of treatment
o Dosage of drugs
o Monitoring of effectiveness of treatment

With the increased knowledge of the human genome and extensive research revealing more information about how genetic factors affect the processes being carried out in the body, many markers are now being identified that can be used to make much more refined choices about the evaluation of the prognostic and the exact treatment to be applied for a specific disease process. Examples of these types of markers are: genetic instability, estrogen receptors, progesterone receptors, HER2 receptors etc.

There is now an urgent requirement for the identification and validation of new molecular markers. This needs basic research spanning multiple disciplines (genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, etc.) and the use of the latest technological developments to allow for high resolution and high through-put.