Cancer Biomarkers and Liquid Biopsies
Biomarkers are an essential diagnostic aid in cancer sciences. They help researchers and doctors understand what tumour a person might have, or indicate the presence of risk factors that can lead to an individual developing cancer later in life.
Cancer Biomarkers
The term ‘cancer biomarkers’ covers a range of biological entities including: proteins, genes, hormones, among many others.
Biomarkers are present throughout the body, such as within urine, blood and other medical samples. Identifying, quantifying, and predicting cancer biomarkers is therefore of high importance, as it can help detect cancer sooner or deliver more personalised medicine.
Much of our cancer biomarker research takes place within the Cancer Research UK National Biomarkers Centre led by Professor Caroline Dive. The National Biomarker Centre has a mission to discover, develop, validate and qualify biomarkers in clinical studies and trials that detect cancer earlier, predict risk of relapse after treatment, and anticipate and monitor therapy responses to inform and support optimised treatment of patients with cancer.
National Biomarkers Centre
At the Cancer Research UK National Biomarkers Centre (NBC), scientists are particularly interested in blood-based biomarkers for personalised medicine, with an emphasis on the development, validation and qualification of liquid biopsies to aid cancer diagnosis, treatment stratification, prognosis, and the detection of relapse and resistance.
Work from the NBC includes circulating tumour cell (CTC), circulating free DNA (cfDNA) and circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA) based approaches. The team were the first to develop CTC-derived xenograft (CDX) models for small cell lung cancer (SCLC). This growing panel of SCLC CDX models are enabling our investigations into the biology of SCLC and its mechanisms for dissemination. These models also facilitate testing of new therapies in a directly patient-relevant setting. Scientists are now able to culture CTCs directly from lung cancer patient’s blood samples, and are evaluating new approaches to test experimental therapies in these CTC cultures with the goal of sending a result back to the clinic to support patient treatment decisions.
Biomarker researchers work closely with the Experimental Cancer Medicine team to provide robust prognostic, predictive and pharmacodynamic biomarker analysis to Good Clinical Practice (GCP) standards for a substantial portfolio of innovative clinical trials and experimental medicine projects. In particular, the TARGET trial is a flagship programme, aimed at molecular profiling of circulating tumour DNA to stratify patients to early phase clinical trials.
The established Tumour Immunology and Inflammation Monitoring Laboratory (TIIML) enables researchers to monitor immune responses in novel immunotherapy trials via studies on tumour biopsies and blood samples, and discover novel prognostic and predictive immunotherapy biomarkers.
Professor Caroline Dive CBE explains how her work developing liquid biopsies to hunt cancer cells that have broken free from tumours and are circulating in the bloodstream. Read about her work in the Cancer Futures article “Developing Pioneering Treatments“.
Where is our research performed?
Biomarkers and liquid biopsies research takes place in the following facilities and centres across Manchester
Latest News
Professor Caroline Dive is named as Interim Director of the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute
Re-Write cancer: £5m boost for new world-class cancer centre in Manchester
Research Themes
Research in Manchester
