Lung cancer biomarkers - Where we are and what we need.

Lung cancer is at present and will be in future a major problem for societies throughout the world [6, 10]. Although national anti-smoking campaigns may have some effects in the western industrialized world, the aging of the societies there as well as the growing societies in the less developed world and air pollution problems like in China will contribute to a rising incidence of lung cancers [5,7,13]. Whether and how screening projects will lead to an earlier detection of lung cancer is still an open question. Therefore further diagnostic and therapeutic efforts are needed to meet this tremendous challenge. Circulating biomarkers are valuable and informative tools in the management of lung cancer disease [11]. Although they are not helpful in the asymptomatic stage for screening purposes – at least not by a single investigation – they have shown great potential in supporting differential diagnosis, estimating prognosis, monitoring the therapy response and the early detection of recurrent disease [2,4,9,12]: