Metabolomics in cancer biomarker discovery; new trend in personalized medicine for breast cancer

Introduction: Breast cancer has become the most frequent malignancy, during past decades. The burden of breast cancer will soon become a challenge to the health economy in Iran, concluding the needs for essential works in this era. Many individuals will die from progressive, advanced breast cancer. These facts reveal that current diagnostic tests including assessment of features of the tumor, e.g. size, grade and analysis of ER/PR, HER2 expression, TAG72.4 and CA549 by common methods (i.e. FISH, IHC and ELISA) isn’t sufficient and individuals with similar cancer phenotypes display marked diversity in outcome and response to intervention.Description: BC development is associated with fundamental metabolic disturbances. Nowadays metabolomics appeal as a valuable, complementary clinical tool. Elucidation of these metabolites, available in bio fluids (i.e. Serum, urine and saliva) allowing recognition of new biomarkers for diagnosis and assess the risk and stratification, new therapy targets and novel approaches for monitoring response. Metabolomics studies metabolic responses to pathophysiological or genetic factors. Metabolic biomarkers as reliable tools, reproducibly detected in samples and available in samples that collected with minimal invasion to patient. There are many qualitative and quantitative laboratory analyses (i.e. gas and liquid chromatography, mass spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis and nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR) to identify metabolic potential biomarkers. Multiple studies demonstrated the application of metabolomics in the risk factors, diagnosis, treatment, prognosis and determining the degree of malignancy based on metabolite patterns.Discussion and conclusion: Finally, the metabolomics approaches are not only useful for diagnostic tools and patient stratification, but may be mapped on metabolic network to reflect disease states. These biomarkers may provide clinicians with more accurate personalized treatments. In this review, we summarized some example for application of metabolomics in each area of breast cancer management.