Biomarkers for Early Cancer Detection: A Landscape View of Recent Advancements, Spotlighting Pancreatic and Liver Cancers

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Early cancer detection is critical because it can significantly improve treatment outcomes, thus saving lives, reducing suffering, and lessening psychological and economic burdens. Cancer biomarkers provide varied information about cancer, from early detection of malignancy to decisions on treatment and subsequent monitoring. A large variety of molecular, histologic, radiographic, or physiological entities or features are among the common types of cancer biomarkers. Sizeable recent methodological progress and insights have promoted significant developments in the field of early cancer detection biomarkers. Here we provide an overview of recent advances in the knowledge related to biomolecules and cellular entities used for early cancer detection. We examine data from the CAS Content Collection, the largest human-curated collection of published scientific information, as well as from the biomarker datasets at Excelra, and analyze the publication landscape of recent research. We also discuss the evolution of key concepts and cancer biomarkers development pipelines, with a particular focus on pancreatic and liver cancers, which are known to be remarkably difficult to detect early and to have particularly high morbidity and mortality. The objective of the paper is to provide a broad overview of the evolving landscape of current knowledge on cancer biomarkers and to outline challenges and evaluate growth opportunities, in order to further efforts in solving the problems that remain. The merit of this review stems from the extensive, wide-ranging coverage of the most up-to-date scientific information, allowing unique, unmatched breadth of landscape analysis and in-depth insights.