Prognostic markers in osteosarcoma.
Osteosarcoma is the most common bone tumor seen in the pediatric and adolescent age group. Survival rates in osteosarcoma have improved considerably from 20 to 65% since the 1980s with the advent of multiagent chemotherapy. Further improvement in survival has not been achieved owing to lack of well-validated prognostic markers and better therapeutic agents. Markers involved with angiogenesis, cell adhesion, apoptosis and cell cycle have been shown recently to play an important role in osteosarcoma growth, differentiation and metastasis. Over the coming years, the new molecular markers may be able not only to prognosticate osteosarcoma patients at baseline but also to serve as therapeutic targets and thereby improve survival rates further. Noninvasive imaging methods in osteosarcoma such as PET-CT and dynamic contrast enhanced and diffusion-weighted MRI hold a lot of promise as surrogate methods for prognostication and response assessment.
Department of Medical Oncology, Dr B R A Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, 110029, India. sambakh@hotmail.com
Sameer
S
Bakhshi
Venkatraman
V
Radhakrishnan
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000032:analysis*; D001859:Bone Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D006801:Humans; D012516:Osteosarcoma / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging / Q000473:pathology*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D011379:Prognosis; D015996:Survival Rate; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor