Pharmacologic biomarkers in the development of stratified cancer medicine

Abstract

Clinical pharmacologic research plays a vital role in cancer drug development. In recent years, biomarker studies have become integral to this process, specifically the use of pharmacologic biomarkers in the development of targeted therapies and their translation to clinical practice. In this overview, we discuss the validation of pharmacodynamics (PD) biomarkers and highlight the circulating tumor DNA as a promising cancer biomarker to illustrate howPDbiomarkers can be powerful tools for guiding treatment strategies.We provide insights into PD biomarker approaches for future development of novel therapies and their role in cancer medicine. © 2014 American Association for Cancer Research.