Enrique Grande, Director of the Medical Oncology Department at Quirónsalud, and Adjunct Professor at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“What is a biomarker and what is it used for in my treatment?”
It’s a word that appears more and more in oncology practices.
‘Biomarker.’
And many times, when he comes up in conversation, the person on the other end nods. But in the gaze there is a question that is not always asked out loud: and what exactly does that mean to me?
A biomarker is, in essence, a measurable characteristic of the tumor — or of the organism itself — that gives us useful information for making decisions. It can be a genetic alteration, the expression of a protein, the level of a molecule in the blood.
The important thing is not the technical definition. The important thing is what it is for.
A biomarker can tell us whether a particular treatment is more or less likely to work in that specific tumor. It can help us understand the risk of relapse. It can indicate whether there is a therapeutic target — that is, a characteristic of the tumor that a particular drug can more precisely target.
That’s why, when we talk about ‘precision medicine’ in oncology, biomarkers are the starting point. We do not choose a treatment only because of the organ where the tumor is. We also chose it because of the biology of that specific tumour. And we know this biology better and better.
That said, it’s important to be honest: not all tumors have actionable biomarkers. There is not always a specific drug for each alteration we find. And test results should always be interpreted in context — with the medical team, calmly, without jumping to conclusions from a report that can be difficult to read.
Asking what biomarkers have been analysed in your tumour, what they mean and whether they condition treatment is a completely reasonable question in any oncology consultation.
And if the answer isn’t clear, it’s worth asking again.”
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