Molecular Diagnosis and Prognosis for Cancers

Molecular analyses of cancers can reveal critical information about the particular mechanisms of initiation and progression of cancers and provide the foundation for clinical tests. There are several aims of such tests: correct diagnosis, earlier diagnosis, prognosis/likelihood of metastasis, responsiveness to specific therapies, and recurrence after successful treatments. Cancers are very heterogeneous in causation, progression, and risk of metastasis and death. Gene expression, genomic, epigenomic, proteomic, and metabolomic studies are complementary “omics platforms” for development of clinically useful tests. It is a long path of discovery, confirmation, validation, clinical trials, and FDA approval to establish the validity and utility of proposed tests. Examples of biomarker discovery and test development for breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers will be presented.