Activity Description
A long-standing goal in cancer biology has been to develop tests that can detect cancer early, accurately predict prognosis, and facilitate selection among therapies. The use of biomarker tests could also greatly facilitate and accelerate the development of targeted cancer therapies by helping companies choose the most promising drug candidates and by identifying patients that are most likely to benefit from a given therapy.
Recent technological advances, especially in the fields of genomics and proteomics, have made it easier to identify many biomarkers at once in high-throughput screens. Such advances have fueled interest in this research area, although validation of markers - that is, determination of clinical relevance and applicability - is quite challenging, and many questions have been raised regarding how new tests will be developed, evaluated, and integrated into clinical practice. Nonetheless, widespread adoption of effective new biomarker tests for cancer detection and diagnosis as well as therapy selection and monitoring may lead to a paradigm shift in the way that clinical medicine is practiced, with potential economic consequences.
An ad hoc committee, via a workshop, examined questions in a consensus report regarding the potential to improve cancer screening, diagnosis, and therapy through the use of emerging biomarker technologies, current limitations of genomics and proteomics technologies for cancer detection, diagnosis, and drug development, and steps that could be taken to improve them; the logistics and cost of coordinating the development of biomarkers and targeted therapies; regulatory oversight of biomarker development and use; the adoption of biomarker-based tests and therapeutics into clinical practice;some of the potential economic implications of adopting these emerging technologies.
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