Biomarkers for colorectal cancer: identification through proteomics

Colorectal cancer is one of the most common cancers and has one of the highest cancer mortality rates. New therapies are needed in order to specifically target individual patients to reduce toxicities and improve patient outcome in the clinic. The potential for biomarker discovery to impact current understanding and outcome of colorectal cancer has yet to be fully achieved, with many potential biomarkers identified but lack of sensitivity and/or specificity in the clinical setting render them inadequate. Biomarkers can provide prognostic or predictive information, act as screening tools or therapeutic targets and improve patient survival, yet thus far their use has been elusive in colorectal cancer. Proteomic techniques are one of the most widely used tools to enable biomarker detection due to its ability to assess protein expression, activation, post-translational modifications as well as its high-throughput potential, robustness and accuracy. This review focuses on the use of proteomic techniques for the identification of potential biomarkers and the use of biomarkers in improving patient therapies.