The number of publications that describe novel biomarkers for cancer has grown by an average of 24% over the last 5 years. As previously reported, this growth rate is essentially the same as for novel biomarkers across all diseases.
This isn’t surprising since 26% of the nearly 4,000 clinical biomarkers listed in BiomarkerBase are being used or developed in the Oncology therapeutic area.
Within cancer biomarkers there is a significant difference in the recent growth rates for novel diagnostic versus prognostic biomarkers.
During 2014, a novel cancer diagnostic biomarker is being published about once every 4-5 days, which is basically the same rate as for 2013.
Novel prognostic biomarkers, however, are being published at a rate 50% higher than 2013. As for all novel biomarkers, the number of new prognostic biomarkers for cancer published during 2014 has nearly surpassed the total for all of 2014.
Since there are so many innovative therapies being developed and used for cancer it is encouraging that there are a rapidly increasing number of biomarkers able to describe the effectiveness of those therapies.