biomarkers news from FierceBioResearcher

Big Pharma companies are often quick to turn their backs on a drug that doesn't deliver the kind of data needed to win approval as well as big markets. But a series of these failed development Read more...

A prostate cancer vaccine developed at the University of Southern California was able to prevent the disease in 90 percent of mice engineered to develop cancer. And the scientists say that the same Read more...

A team of scientists primarily led by researchers at Stanford University say they have developed a blood test that is 90 percent accurate in identifying Alzheimer's, often years before its worst Read more...

Scientists at Canada's McGill University say blocking the enzyme PTP1B delayed cancer in mice that also respond to Herceptin. They add development of new drugs that can block the enzyme could well boost the effectiveness of other therapies in humans. The team concentrated on a strain of mice that develops breast cancer as the result of over-activity in the Her-2 gene, a trigger in about one quarter of all breast cancer cases and a biomarker for Heceptin. In addition to delaying the onset …

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France's ExonHit Therapeutics says it could have a diagnostic test that can identify Alzheimer's. The disease has been notoriously difficult to diagnose at an early stage. But ExonHit says a panel of 60 biomarkers that can be detected in the blood can possibly be used to create the first such test. Researchers studied the diagnostic test in a trial involving 51 people with Alzheimer's and 34 who did not. The panel of genes was able to identify 78 percent of the patients with the disease …

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New biomarkers being tracked for cardiac risk did help provide indicators of a person's condition, according to Harvard researchers. But the biomarkers currently offer little more than what physicians can already glean from a patients record for smoking, obesity, blood pressure and cholesterol levels. Article

The Wall Street Journal examines the "hot" field of biomarker research for Alzheimer's. Scientists in the U.S. and Europe have identified proteins that can serve as an early warning of Alzheimer's, which in turn would allow for better treatment at an earlier stage for many patients. Researchers from Cornell and the Weill Cornell Medical College say they've found 23 biomarkers for Alzheimer's. Earlier this year, researchers in the U.K. working with Proteome Sciences say they have …

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A research group led by Peggy Porter, M.D., of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center says that the protein p27 may be an effective biomarker in predicting the likelihood of surviving breast cancer. Researchers have known for years that p27 prevents cells from dividing and low levels of p27 are associated with a poor prognosis in breast cancer as well as other cancers. For this study, researchers were able to examine the level of p27 with the outcomes of patients involved in two …

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Researchers at the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute say they've identified a biomarker for Alzheimer's that may allow for an early diagnosis of the debilitating disease with a brief, painless skin test. Alzheimer's is a notoriously difficult disease to diagnose. Standard methods today involve a battery of imperfect psychiatric evaluations or post-mortems that are of no help to the living. When the disease begins it is also hard to distinguish from other impairments with …

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