Biomarkers, yesterday, today and tomorrow: the basis for health claims

The development of useful and accurate biomarkers for predicting outcomes of food based interventions is becoming more and more important, given the emphasis being placed on ingredients in foods contributing to disease risk reduction and optimal health promotion. With the human genome now laid bare, opportunities abound to barcode individuals with their risk profiles. The massive increase in DNA sequence information together with the development of new technologies such as genomics, proteomics and bioinformatics, has resulted in a much greater capacity to determine individual risk profiles. Screening for biomarkers at the gene or protein expression level using microarray technology has the potential to identify new biomarkers for disease diagnosis. Whether these techniques will enable a better understanding of food-gene interactions to permit health claims rather than better therapeutic treatment (at high economic cost) remains to be demonstrated.