Biomarker Successes Remain Elusive For Mesothelioma and Cancer Researchers
by Nancy Meredith
According to the National Cancer Institute, a biomarker is “a biological molecule found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues that is a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease.” Biomarkers can be useful in diagnosing and treating diseases such as mesothelioma and other cancers, and researchers have been investing large amounts of time and money to move their research to the patients and into the medical field. Unfortunately, according to the August 12, 2010 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the investments have not translated into major clinical success.
An article published in 2009 in the journal Current Drug Targets led researchers to indicate that using biomarkers for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy is promising for malignant mesothelioma. With mesothelioma, a serious cancer that occurs in individuals exposed to airborne asbestos fibers, being chemoresistant, the researchers were focusing on biologic drugs that would target tumor growth factors.
Physicians, oncologists and mesothelioma patients are anxious to find a new treatment for the incurable disease. While the disease can be treated with varying degrees of success through the use of surgical procedures, chemotherapy and radiation, once the symptoms appear the disease has progressed to an advanced stage, and the survival is usually less than 18 months.
The author of the article, Eleftherios P. Diamandis, M.D., Ph.D., professor of pathology and laboratory medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, states that although major investments have been made to discover and validate cancer biomarkers over the past 15 years, failures can be attributed to problems with study design and interpretation, as well as statistical deficiencies.
Diamandis reviewed 7 cases that were initially considered to be breakthroughs in biomarker use, but later became failures. The problems identified ranged from inappropriate statistical analysis to biases in case patient and control subject selection.
Diamandis found that while disease biomarkers are used widely in medicine, very few are useful for cancer diagnosis and monitoring. Many reports have described new cancer biomarkers that promised to revolutionize the diagnosis of cancer and the management of cancer patients, however, no new major cancer biomarkers have been approved for clinical use for at least 25 years.
