Serum biomarker profiling in cancer studies: a question of standardisation?

Companion animals are exposed to similar environmental conditions and carcinogens as humans. In some animal cancers, there also appears to be the same genetic changes associated as in humans. However, little work has been carried out in cancer biomarker identification in animals. The recent dramatic advances in molecular medicine, genomics, proteomics and translational research will allow biomarker identification, which may provide the best strategies for veterinarians and clinicians to combat disease by early diagnosis and administration of effective treatments. Proteomics may have important applications in cancer diagnosis, prognosis and predictive clinical outcome that could directly change clinical practice by affecting critical elemen-ts of care and management. This review summarizes the advances in proteomics that has propelled us to this exciting age of clinical proteomics, and highlights the future work that is required for this to become a reality. In this review, we will discuss the available proteomic technologies and their limitations, and highlight the key areas of research and how they have been used to discover cancer biomarkers. The principles described here are equally applicable to human and animal disease, but implementation of 'omic' technologies requires stringent guidelines for collection of clinical material, the application of analytical techniques and interpretation of the data.