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. 2012 Aug 9:10:87.
doi: 10.1186/1741-7015-10-87.

The failure of protein cancer biomarkers to reach the clinic: why, and what can be done to address the problem?

Eleftherios P Diamandis  1
Affiliations

The failure of protein cancer biomarkers to reach the clinic: why, and what can be done to address the problem?

Eleftherios P Diamandis. BMC Med. .

Abstract

There is a plethora of published cancer biomarkers but the reality is that very few, if any, new circulating cancer biomarkers have entered the clinic in the last 30 years. I here try to explain this apparent oxymoron by classifying circulating cancer biomarkers into three categories: fraudulent reports (rare); true discoveries of biomarkers, that then fail to meet the demands of the clinic; and false discoveries, which represent artifactual biomarkers. I further provide examples of combinations of some known cancer biomarkers that can perform well in niche clinical applications, despite individually being not useful.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Summary of reasons for biomarker failure to reach the clinic. Fraud is a very rare reason for biomarker failures; most biomarkers represent true discoveries but their clinical characteristics are not good enough to be used at the clinic.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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