文章基本信息

标题：Biomarkers and subtypes of cancer
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作者：Maud H.W. Starmans ; Paul C. Boutros
期刊名称：Aging
出版年度：2015
卷号：7
期号：5
页码：280-281
出版社：U.S.Department of Health & Human Service
摘要：The identification of prognostic and predictive biomarkers is a key research area in medicine. These biomarkers aim to contribute to personalize medicine. Ultimately, in personalized medicine treatment will be tailored towards each patient's specific disease and genetics to optimize treatment outcome and minimize side effects. In cancer research large efforts are made to screen for biological entities like gene mutations and transcription-based biomarkers for this purpose, however the identified markers are most of the time not accurate enough for clinical use. Recently we have shown that confounding factors play an important role in the limited performance of such (bio)markers [1]. Mutations in the RAS gene, a gene frequently mutated in lung cancer, were not prognostic [2], however they largely influenced accuracy of transcription-based biomarkers for non-small cell lung cancer. Taking RAS mutations to define patient subgroups and define transcription-based biomarkers for these specific patient subgroups resulted in an increase in prognostic power. While screening for prognostic or predictive markers it will thus be key to be aware of and correct for potential confounders. Therefore to create clinically useful biomarkers it will be detrimental to define clinically relevant patient subgroups rather than generalize across patients.