Recent Patents on Biomarkers (Discontinued) - Volume 1, Issue 2, 2011

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a diverse clinical syndrome and is defined using its unifying features of a sudden loss or substantial reduction in kidney function due to a parenchymal injury caused by circulatory collapse, ischemiareperfusion, systemic inflammatory response syndrome, endogenous or exogenous toxicants or urinary obstructive injury. Over the last decade, the study of biomarkers for acute kidney injury has provided Read More

Molecularly targeted agents have been successfully introduced into the treatment of patients with cancers. Although, these agents have been shown to improve clinical outcomes for many cancer patients, not all patients benefit from them and a considerable proportion of patients experience severe toxicity that can impair quality of life. To take full advantage of the targeted agents, we need predictive biomarkers of Read More

Lung cancer constitutes the leading cause of cancer death worldwide with an overall 5-year survival rate being only 11-14%. As advances in molecular biology reveal the genomic, proteomic and phenotypical heterogeneity of nonsmall- cell lung cancer (NSCLC), it has become evident that treatment strategies should be targeted and tailored to each patient's molecular tumor characteristics. An abundance of prognostic and Read More

Following the “hierarchy model” of cancer evolution, which describes tumors as assemblies of biologically distinct cells, many researchers have focused on a subpopulation of cancer cells having “stem cell properties” and claimed to be the one that can initiate and maintain tumor growth. Those cells termed “Cancer Stem Cells” (CSCs) or “Cancer Initiating Cells” (CICs) retain the properties of self-renewal, multi-lineage diffe Read More

Human Apurinic/apyrimidinic Endonuclease 1 (APE1) is a key multifunctional protein essential for DNA base excision repair pathway (BER) involved in the repair of DNA base damage caused by alkylating damage and ionising radiation. In preclinical studies, APE1 depletion enhances cytotoxicity of therapeutic agents. Over-expression of APE1 is frequently seen in human tumours and may have prognostic/predictive significance in Read More

The integrity of the human genome is threatened by DNA damaging agents, particularly ionizing radiation, which induces potentially lethal double strand breaks. Ionizing radiation is of particular concern given its increasing use in medical diagnostic imaging and given the risk of radiological attack or exposure from nuclear reactor accidents. As biological responses to DNA damage have been elucidated, numerous biomarker Read More

Acute Kidney Injury (AKI) complicates up to 30% of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) admissions and has been independently associated with increased morbidity and mortality in the critically ill. Current treatment of AKI is frustrated by delay and imprecision in diagnosis when based on traditional biochemical markers of renal function such as serum creatinine. These factors have contributed to the lack of effective interventions to Read More

The recent patents annotated in this section have been selected from various patent databases, and are relevant to the articles published in this journal issue. The patents are categorized in fast emerging patent biomarker applications e.g. discovery and validation in drug discovery, clinical development and molecular diagnostics, bioinformatics, preclinical biomarker discovery, personalized medicine, translational biomarker Read More