Developing of cancer and pharmacodynamic biomarkers

Biomarkers are molecules produced by the cancer cells or by other cells in the body in response to cancer.  They can be found in the tumor tissue and in several other compartments like blood and urine. They can serve the purpose of diagnosis and prognosis. Our lab is developing assays to detect biomarkers that help oncologists to determine what patients are more likely to response to a treatment (i.e. selection and predictive biomarkers) and to determine the effect of a anti-neoplastic agent in a patient (i.e. pharmacodynamic biomarkers).  We use metabolomics, proteomics and epigenomics platforms for assay development.