BIOMARKER

When you are studying or looking for the presence of a disease, there are several things a doctor or researcher would want to know. How is the part of the body that is affected by the disease functioning in that individual at this moment? One way would be to take a piece of heart or brain of the living patient and look at it, but obviously that is not something anyone wants to happen. What if there were tests that could give us information on the disease, but were not invasive or hurt the individual? These tests would measure abnormal changes elsewhere in the body that the disease was causing, providing information on the process of a disease in that individual. These indirect measurements of a disease process that are substitutes for direct measurements are called biomarkers.

Imaging, like CT, MRI or PET scans, are one kind of biomarkers for a disease process. While providing a lot of information these tests are expensive and not available to most individuals. If the disease affects the brain, then cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) can be drawn from a spinal tap. Many biomarkers can also be measured in a blood sample. Sometimes even urine can be used as a source of biomarkers.

Another important question in research is, can I predict if an individual is developing the disease before it causes symptoms? Many biomarkers can provide information that the disease has started before the person realizes it or has symptoms of the disease. If we can detect signs of the disease early, then we can do research with the goal to treat the disease early and possibly prevent symptoms from occurring at all.

Lastly, can we use this for development of new treatments? If you were testing a drug to treat a disease that progresses slowly over many years, you would want to know if it is working as soon as possible, rather than wait years to see if there are positive or negative results. If you measure the biomarkers many times during the disease, and they begin to return to their normal values, then you can know that the drug is working early in the trial.

Because of the value of biomarkers, the research improving them is a very active one. New biomarkers are being developed all the time. This is particularly true for blood biomarkers, as these are the easiest to obtain on an individual. Our studies include blood biomarkers, and some studies may also include imaging.