[Biomarkers collections: the future or a waste of resources?]

Disease biomarkers would aim at a more specific definition of diagnosis or subtype of a certain disease, as well as prognosis definition, including efficacy and side effects of certain therapeutics. Biomarkers could lead to a prognostically optimized definition of remission in the individual patient and thus to a more objective definition of therapeutic efficacy. Is this possible and does it make sense? Or would an extensive analysis of biomarkers to date lead to a costly overestimation of as yet not well established biologic parameters? Although we are currently unable to answer this question, many colleagues argue in favour of more in depth research for a better evaluation of biomarkers in many diseases. This could save money if we were able to predict the efficacy of expensive drugs such as immunobiologics. Biomarkers comprise cytometric information, data on protein expression and secretion, mRNA, microRNA or DNA, including epigenetic variants. Although much of these data already exist in the scientific literature, it is associated with problems in terms of feasibility (for cytometry and RNA analysis only on-site analysis is possible, while for DNA analysis central testing is also possible), costs and reproducibility (ethnic variability!). To date all biomarkers have only limited value in terms of the above-mentioned aims. The present review compiles "PROs and CONs" in a subjective way in order to provoke a discussion on the meaningfulness of biomarkers, while at the same time supporting and encouraging further research in this field.