Cancer diagnosis: From dogs to DNA or from DNA to dogs

摘要

Laboratory medicine plays an increasingly important role in the management of cancer patients (1). The involvement of laboratory medicine in clinical oncology is based on the concept of biomarkers. A biomarker may be defined as a parameter that can be detected in the laboratory and is associated with malignant transformation or tumor progression. The utilization of biomarkers encompasses predicting the subject's risk of cancer [e.g., determining BRCA1 mutation to identify individuals with high risk of breast and ovarian cancer (2)], contributing to the diagnosis [e.g., utilization of tumor markers for pre-operative diagnosis of ovarian cancer (3, 4)], predicting the prognosis and response to therapy, or monitoring the therapeutic response or detecting the recurrence. Biomarkers are also used to assess the toxicity of anti-cancer therapy (5).