Current Cancer Therapy Reviews - Volume 4, Issue 2, 2008

Earlier this year our dear friend and colleague Professor Tony Dodi died suddenly. He was a Scientist of immense integrity and worked with many of the authors who have contributed to the current series of articles focussing on Cancer Biomarkers. His laboratory at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) authored the article entitled “NK Cells, monocytes and Non T-cell biomarkers as prognostic indicators in cancer immunotherapy” i Read More

Cancer is a genetic disorder resulting in a change in cell growth pattern, cell phenotype and functional traits. Tissue integrity is challenged as a result of malignancy, placing the host-cell equilibrium under threat. In particular the immune system may respond to cancer in several ways: (1) to the benefit of the host by mediating the destruction of the malignant cells, (2) provide the tumour with an additional growth advantage Read More

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 diagn Read More

Prostate cancer remains one of the most common cancers in men and treatment options for patients with advanced or metastatic disease are limited. Immunotherapeutic approaches, such as passive or active immunotherapy, have been shown to be successful in treating some cancer patients. These rely on the identification of cancer specific antigens that can be targeted by the immune system or used to diagnose as Read More

Biomarkers become more and more important tools in clinical diagnosis of cutaneous malignancies. Furthermore, after vigorous validation, biomarkers may have influence on future prognostic classification systems. Clinical and histopathological parameters such as anatomic site, type of the primary tumor, tumor size, invasion depth, ulceration, vascular invasion, lymph node involvement and others are well established fo Read More

The progress in genomics and proteomics resulted in increasing number of tumor-associated antigens (TAA) being discovered as cancer biomarkers and targets for immunotherapy. The key role played by HLA class I antigens in immune reactivity against malignant and virally infected cells via binding to the peptides of TAA and subsequent presentation to cytotoxic T-lymphocytes stimulates interest in the characterizatio Read More

The immune system plays an important role in eliminating tumors. Accordingly, many immunotherapy protocols have been developed in attempts to boost anti-tumor immune responses in cancer patients. These trials most commonly aim at augmenting T-cell-, especially CD8+ T-cell, responses. In clinical trials performed to date, however, little correlation has been observed between parameters measured to assess c Read More

Identification and characterisation of tumour associated antigens is a pre-requisite for an effective and targeted immunotherapy. Tumour antigens are used as markers to improve diagnosis and to predict the outcome of a cancer. This review emphasises on a few important cellular target molecules such as indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), interleukin- 15 (IL15), mucin 1 (MUC1) and Major histocompatibility complex class Read More

During the last few years, adoptive cellular therapy (ACT) — the isolation of antigen-specific lymphocytes, their ex vivo expansion and activation, and subsequent autologous administration — has been tested for treatment of melanoma tumours. Initial ACT used melanoma -infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) that often contain tumour reactive lymphocytes, of diverse, mostly unknown, specificities [1, 2]. Recently, the identific Read More

Progress in the field of NK cell receptors (NKRs) and their ligands has revolutionized our concept of how NK cells selectively recognize and lyse tumor while sparing normal cells. Major families of NKRs that inhibit and activate NK cells to lyse target cells have been characterized, including killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs), C-type lectins, and natural cytotoxicity receptors. Identification of NK receptor ligands su Read More

To date, no effective treatment is available for advanced cancers, which remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Clearly, there is urgent need to unravel novel biomarkers for early detection. Proteomic approaches for the identification of novel biomarkers for cancer diagnosis and staging have traditionally relied on the identification of differentially expressed proteins between tumour cells and their normal counterp Read More

A lot of experimental data has been produced which suggests that there is a crucial role for glycans during the different stages of melanoma progression. Malignant transformation is associated with various alterations in the glycosylation pattern of the protein glycans. The most common changes are associated with the presence of more branched and hypersialylated N-linked oligosaccharides, re-expression of fetal-type a Read More

The production of autoantibodies against tumour-derived proteins has been observed in the most, if not all cancer patients therefore they seem to be very attractive biomarkers for the diagnosis or early detection of cancer. Moreover, even if they by themselves have a minor role in the anti-tumour immune response, the autoantibody profile likely reflects the repertoire of activated CD4+ T cells, presumably, including both, t Read More

The advent of post genomic technologies and their application to biomedical problems resulted in a massive increase the complexity of data generated. This has resulted in the need for more refined statistical and computational methods for analysis of this type of data Through comprehensive analysis and modelling approaches, structures or classes in the data can be defined, denovo predictive biomarkers ident Read More

Biomarkers can be used to aid the diagnosis of a disease (particularly early detection of occult tumours), to aid in the staging of disease, to predict outcome of disease, to act as a surrogate for clinical progression and to monitor responses to treatment. It is therefore important when referring to biomarkers to state exactly which of these indications is being sought. There is a real clinical need for biomarkers in all these stages, Read More