Sistema Gastrointestinal e Digestivo

Abstrato

Biomarkers in Colorectal Cancer Screening

Vijeta Pamudurthy, Marc Bissonnette, Vani Konda

Colorectal cancer is the second most frequent cause of death by cancer. Current gold standard screening tools are invasive, expensive, and require a lot of preparation, which result in decreased patient compliance. Screening modalities that are less invasive, have high sensitivity and specificity, inexpensive, and more accepted by the general population than the current gold standard screening tools may potentially prevent the deaths caused by colorectal cancer. Noninvasive stool tests like fecal occult blood test and fecal immunohistochemical test have become widely used in detecting hemoglobin in stool. Some of these biomarkers have shown favorable results to detecting adenomas and early stage colorectal cancer diagnosis. Furthermore, the evolution of biomarkers is becoming more promising for the early diagnosis of colorectal cancer. This article will discuss the advances of biomarkers in stool, serum, and urine assays that enable early detection of colorectal cancer.