title: Challenges and prospects for biomarker research: a current perspective from the developing world.
abstract: Majority of deaths due to communicable and non-communicable diseases occur in the low and middle-income nations (LMNs), mainly due to the lack of early diagnoses and timely treatments. In such a scenario, biomarkers serve as an indispensible resource that can be used as indicators of biological processes, specific disease conditions or response to therapeutic interventions. Evaluation, diagnosis and management of diseases in developing world by following/extrapolating the findings obtained on the basis of the research work involving only the populations from the developed countries, could often be highly misleading due to existence of diverse patterns of diseases in developing countries compared to the developed world. Biomarker candidates identified from high-throughput integrated omics technologies have promising potential; however, their actual clinical applications are found to be limited, primarily due to the challenges of disease heterogeneity and pre-analytical variability associated with the biomarker discovery pipeline. Additionally, in the developing world, economic crunches, lack of awareness and education, paucity of biorepositories, enormous diversities in socio-epidemiological background, ethnicity, lifestyle, diet, exposure to various environmental risk factors and infectious agents, and ethical and social issues also cumulatively hinder biomarker discovery ventures. Establishment of standard operating procedures, comprehensive data repositories and exchange of scientific findings are crucial for reducing the variability and fragmentation of data. This review highlights the challenges associated with the discovery, validation and translational phases of biomarker research in LMNs with some of their amenable solutions and future prospects. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Biomarkers: A Proteomic Challenge.
authors.affiliation: Wadhwani Research Center for Biosciences and Bioengineering, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India.
authors.forename: Shabarni
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Wadhwani Research Center for Biosciences and Bioengineering, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India.
authors.forename: Apoorva
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Venkatesh
authors.affiliation: Wadhwani Research Center for Biosciences and Bioengineering, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India.
authors.forename: Sandipan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Ray
authors.affiliation: Wadhwani Research Center for Biosciences and Bioengineering, Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, Mumbai 400076, India. Electronic address: sanjeeva@iitb.ac.in.
authors.forename: Sanjeeva
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Srivastava
mesh_terms: D015415:Biomarkers / Q000032:analysis*; D035843:Biomedical Research; D015510:Clinical Medicine; D003906:Developing Countries; D006801:Humans; D011506:Proteins / Q000032:analysis*; D040901:Proteomics / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D015415:Biomarkers; D011506:Proteins
keywords: Biomarker; Biorepository; Developing world; Disease heterogeneity; Funding; IP issue