Emerging Breast Cancer Biomarkers

The most common cancer for women in the United Kingdom is breast cancer and it is well known that genomic modifications are responsible for breast carcinogenesis. Major developments in genomics and proteomics have uncovered biomarkers which have a crucial role in this process. To move towards individualized and improved breast cancer care, there is a need for tumor markers that are associated with disease diagnosis, prognosis, treatment and monitoring. General opinion is that biomarkers can bring more accurate and sensitive tools to the clinical settings than conventional approved histopathological parameters. However, clinical applications of breast tumor markers remain quite low in numbers because the data regarding these novel markers for breast cancer is limited and do not allow well-grounded conclusions. This review presents a non exhaustive selection of biomarkers published, some validated, and their uses in breast cancer management.