Cancer kills 147,500 people each year in France. The development of personalized therapies and more recently theranostics, completely changed the biological approach to this disease. Thus, the already well-known but sparsely specific serum markers are being replaced by new tumor markers, predictive of resistance or response to targeted therapies. The study of these biomarkers is performed by different technical approaches, which are essentially based molecular biology assays. These determinations are assessed in France within the 28 molecular tumor genetics platforms approved by French National Cancer Institute (INCa). The most commonly used assays for this type of molecular diagnostics, such as real-time PCR, the sequencing, immunohistochemistry, FISH or CISH, are relatively difficult because most of them are based on the use of formalin fixed paraffin embedded tumor tissues. This paper provides a synthesis of validated theranostic biomarkers and the most used diagnostic methods, but also draw a point on the best incoming biomarkers candidates and assays in close development using liquid biopsies.
Keywords: biomarkers; targeted therapies; theranostic.