Zhang Jiajia, Quadri Shafat, Wolfgang Christopher L, Zheng Lei
Departments of Oncology and Surgery, the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, the Bloomberg-Kimmel Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, the Pancreatic Cancer Precision Medicine Center of Excellence Program, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21287, USA.
Merck Research Laboratory, Merck & Co., Kenilworth, NJ 07033, USA.
Biomedicines. 2018 Aug 13;6(3):87. doi: 10.3390/biomedicines6030087.
Biomarkers refer to a plethora of biological characteristics that can be quantified to facilitate cancer diagnosis, forecast the prognosis of disease, and predict a response to treatment. The identification of objective biomarkers is among the most crucial steps in the realization of individualized cancer care. Several tumor biomarkers for gastrointestinal malignancies have been applied in the clinical setting to help differentiate between cancer and other conditions, facilitate patient selection for targeted therapies, and to monitor treatment response and recurrence. With the coming of the immunotherapy age, the need for a new development of biomarkers that are indicative of the immune response to tumors are unprecedentedly urgent. Biomarkers from the tumor microenvironment, tumor genome, and signatures from liquid biopsies have been explored, but the majority have shown a limited prognostic or predictive value as single biomarkers. Nevertheless, use of multiplex biomarkers has the potential to provide a significantly increased diagnostic accuracy compared to traditional single biomarker. A comprehensive analysis of immune-biomarkers is needed to reveal the dynamic and multifaceted anti-tumor immunity and thus imply for the rational design of assays and combinational strategies.
生物标志物指的是大量可量化的生物学特征，有助于癌症诊断、预测疾病预后以及预测治疗反应。识别客观的生物标志物是实现个体化癌症治疗的关键步骤之一。几种用于胃肠道恶性肿瘤的肿瘤生物标志物已应用于临床，以帮助区分癌症与其他病症、协助选择适合靶向治疗的患者，并监测治疗反应和复发情况。随着免疫治疗时代的到来，对能够指示肿瘤免疫反应的新型生物标志物的需求变得前所未有的迫切。人们已经探索了来自肿瘤微环境、肿瘤基因组以及液体活检的特征，但大多数单一生物标志物的预后或预测价值有限。然而，与传统单一生物标志物相比，使用多重生物标志物有可能显著提高诊断准确性。需要对免疫生物标志物进行全面分析，以揭示动态且多方面的抗肿瘤免疫，从而为检测方法和联合策略的合理设计提供依据。
