title: Circulating Biomarkers for Prediction of Treatment Response.
abstract: For cancer management, predicting and monitoring response to treatment and disease progression longitudinally is crucial due to changes in tumor biology and therapy responsiveness over time. However, solid tumors are usually sampled only at time of initial diagnosis, as obtaining tissue biopsies is an invasive procedures with associated risks. Thus, there is a pressing need for approaches able to serially detect function-related reliable biomarkers reflecting treatment response and/or disease progression through easy noninvasive procedures, amenable for longitudinal analysis of tumor molecular features. Recent evidences indicate that blood and other body fluids could replace invasive surgical biopsies and represent a "liquid biopsy" containing cells and nucleic acids released by primary and metastatic lesions, reflecting their biological features and allowing identification of clinically useful biomarkers and treatment-induced cancer adaption processes. The development of new and highly sensitive technologies that allow to detect and characterize circulating tumor cells, to identify cell-free nucleic acids (circulating tumor-associated microRNAs and cancer-specific mutations in circulating DNA) and to measure their eventual dynamic changes represents therefore a major achievement for disease monitoring. However, notwithstanding preliminary findings support the prognostic and/or predictive role of this new generation of biomarkers, there are a number of technical and biological caveats that still require additional studies to demonstrate and validate their clinical utility. A unique opportunity to rapidly assess the contribution of circulating tumor cells and cell-free nucleic acids to patient management and to personalized medicine could derive by their combined consideration in the neoadjuvant setting.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD).
authors.forename: Vera
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Cappelletti
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD).
authors.forename: Valentina
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Appierto
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD).
authors.forename: Paola
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Tiberio
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD).
authors.forename: Emanuela
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fina
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD).
authors.forename: Maurizio
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Callari
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental Oncology and Molecular Medicine, Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori, Milan, Italy (VC, VA, PT, EF, MC, MGD). mariagrazia.daidone@istitutotumori.mi.it.
authors.forename: Maria Grazia
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Daidone
mesh_terms: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000097:blood*; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm / Q000097:blood*; D018450:Disease Progression; D006801:Humans; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000097:blood*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000097:blood / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000628:therapy*; D009360:Neoplastic Cells, Circulating / Q000473:pathology*; D017063:Outcome Assessment, Health Care / Q000379:methods; D011379:Prognosis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity
chemical_list: D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D004273:DNA, Neoplasm; D035683:MicroRNAs