New hunters of diagnostic biomarkers hope to improve cancer diagnosis. They envision biomarkers that will allow more accurate disease-stage monitoring, more effective choice of therapy and, ultimately, the development of therapies themselves. Despite the plethora of new technologies, tools, and genomic data, however, cancer-specific markers have provent obe difficult beasts to catch.
Each year in the US, an estimated 1.2 million people are diagnosed with cancer. More than half a million died of it in 1999.
The disease, which costs the US economy $107 billion per year, according to the NIH, is often curable if it is detected at an early stage, when it is organ-confined...