Biomarkers Provide Valuable Diagnostic and Therapeutic Insight on Breast Cancer
The report Biomarkers in Breast Cancer 2010 presents findings on more than 200 proposed breast cancer biomarkers in a review that includes studies over the last eight years, through to May 2010. Biomarkers are discussed and presented by their potential utility in key breast cancer areas, including diagnosis, metastasis, response to therapy, prognosis and disease predisposition.
Today, biomarkers recommended to guide the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer, are limited in number. In their most recent (2007) guidelines, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) supported the case for just nine markers, based on studies carried out between 1999 – 2006.
However, recent years have seen the discovery and clinical study of significant numbers of new biomarkers and additional clinical data are now available on earlier markers not yet in common use. Collectively, these biomarkers are providing valuable insights, diagnostically and therapeutically, in key areas of breast cancer. These include diagnosis, metastasis and spread, therapy direction, response to therapy, prognosis, predisposition, drug discovery and clinical research.
According to the 195 page report, over the last decade, research has generated a wealth of biological data that characterise the changes that occur in breast cancer. These findings have advanced the understanding of this disease, and allowed the development of more discriminating diagnostic methods and treatments. Cancer embraces multiple changes at the genetic, phenotypic, cellular and histological level and nowhere are these changes more evident than in the field of cancer biomarkers, which now embraces many thousands of studies: cells, animals and human.
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