Biomarkers for the lung cancer diagnosis and their advances in proteomics

Over a last decade, intense interest has been focused on biomarker discovery and their clinical uses. This interest is accelerated by the completion of human genome project and the progress of techniques in proteomics. Especially, cancer biomarker discovery is eminent in this field due to its anticipated critical role in early diagnosis, therapy guidance, and prognosis monitoring of cancers. Among cancers, lung cancer, one of the top three major cancers, is the one showing the highest mortality because of failure in early diagnosis. Numerous potential DNA biomarkers such as hypermethylations of the promoters and mutations in K-ras, p53, and protein biomarkers; carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA), CYFRA21-1, plasma kallikrein B1 (KLKB1), Neuron-specific enolase, etc. have been discovered as lung cancer biomarkers. Despite extensive studies thus far, few are turned out to be useful in clinic. Even those used in clinic do not show enough sensitivity, specificity and reproducibility for general use. This review describes what the cancer biomarkers are for, various types of lung cancer biomarkers discovered at present and predicted future advance in lung cancer biomarker discovery with proteomics technology.