The role of biomarkers in the development of novel cancer therapies

Abstract

The etiology of diverse patient responses to a given pharmaceutical treatment has eluded science for decades. Only during the last 10-15 years has our understanding of the interplay between genetics and pharmaceuticals advanced to the point that personalized medicine may optimize therapies for each individual patient. The primary goals of personalized medicine are identifying individuals at risk of developing disease to better prevent disease in the healthy population, accurately monitoring each patient's response to therapy and predicting recurrence in order to pre-empt it. This review gives an explanation of biomarkers and addresses their role in the diagnosis and surveillance of various cancers. It also addresses the challenges of developing novel therapies utilizing newly discovered biomarkers.

Evolving hallmarks in urothelial bladder cancer: unveiling potential biomarkers

“…2 This molecular knowledge is already being applied into clinical practice, with targeted therapies that interfere with each of the hallmarks being developed and entering in clinical trial phase or, in some cases, being approved for clinical use in treating certain forms of human cancer. [3][4][5] In urothelial bladder cancer (UBC) setting, although a reasonable number of biomarkers seem to be prognostically relevant, 6,7 there is a substantial delay in the translation into the clinics, and clinical trials with molecularly targeted agents have been few in number and largely unsuccessful. 8,9 This is probably due to the unique complexity involved in the dual-track pathway of bladder carcinogenesis, which postulates that UBC develops via two distinct but somewhat overlapping pathways, resulting in two main phenotypic variants with different biological behaviours and prognoses.…”