Biomarker Commons

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements of atrophy in an important area of the brain are an accurate predictor of multiple sclerosis (MS), according to a new study published online in the journal Radiology. According to the researchers, these atrophy measurements offer an improvement over current methods for evaluating patients at risk for MS.

"Current wisdom says that cells are closed entities that communicate through the secretion of soluble signalling molecules. Recent findings indicate that cells can exchange more complex information – whole packages of genetic material and signalling proteins. This is an entirely new conception of how cells communicate", says Dr Mattias Belting, Professor of Oncology at Lund University and senior consultant in oncology at Skåne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.

Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (BIPI) today announced results of two surveys that explored how pulmonologists and pathologists are incorporating biomarker testing into the care of patients with lung cancer. The results point to an increased role of these physicians in biomarker testing as well as greater multidisciplinary collaboration. However, they also reveal that an opportunity exists to improve how soon these tests are requested and to identify challenges with testing, including collecting a sufficient amount and quality of lung tissue.

For women with metastatic, HER2-positive breast cancer, the amount of HER2 on their tumor might determine how much they benefit from a drug called trastuzumab emtansine (T-DM1), according to data from a subanalysis of the phase III clinical trial that led the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to approve the drug on Feb. 22, 2013. These findings were presented by José Baselga, M.D., Ph.D., physician-in-chief at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, N.Y., at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, held in Washington, D.C., April 6-10.

bioTheranostics’ CancerTYPE® ID molecular cancer classifier demonstrated superior accuracy compared with immunohistochemistry (IHC) in identifying the primary site in difficult-to-diagnose metastatic tumors. The comparative effectiveness study, which was published recently in The Journal of Molecular Diagnostics, is the first comprehensive investigation to directly compare the diagnostic accuracy of the two tumor classification techniques.

A new system for isolating rare circulating tumor cells (CTCs) – living solid tumor cells found at low levels in the bloodstream – shows significant improvement over previously developed devices and does not require prior identification of tumor-specific target molecules. Developed at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) Center for Engineering in Medicine and the MGH Cancer Center, the device rapidly delivers a population of unlabeled tumor cells that can be analyzed with both standard clinical diagnostic cytopathology and advanced genetic and molecular technology.