%0 Journal Article
%T The clinical use of biomarkers as prognostic factors in Ewing sarcoma
%A Annmeik M van Maldegem
%A Pancras CW Hogendoorn
%A Andrew B Hassan
%J Clinical Sarcoma Research
%D 2012
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2045-3329-2-7
%X Ewing sarcoma is the second most common primary bone sarcoma. It is an orphan state disease with approximately 900 new diagnoses a year in Europe [1]. It is also called the Ewing Sarcoma Family of Tumours (ESFT) and includes Ewing sarcoma of bone, extra-osseous Ewing sarcoma, Primitive Neuroectodermal (PNET) and Askin's tumours. Ewing sarcoma is diagnostically defined by a Ewing sarcoma EWS (chromosome 22) translocation resulting in fusion with an ETS transcription factor, the commonest abnormality (85%) being EWS-FLI1 (chromosome 11). Ewing sarcoma is a disease affecting children and young adults with a peak incidence at age fifteen. With current treatment options the 5 year survival for non-metastatic disease is 60-70%. However, survival for the 25% of patients that present with metastatic disease is approximately 20% [2], and for those who develop relapsed and/or refractory disease, the survival is no more than 10%.Current patients are subdivided by disease stage, namely non-metastatic, metastatic and recurrence, and patients in each group are treated the same. But apparently this subdivision is not always related to clinical outcome, because of the patients who present with non-metastatic disease, approximately 30% die within 5 years. This group may be currently undertreated while the 70% who survive may be over-treated. It may therefore be important to separate the high risk patients from the low risk patients and to be able to detect chemotherapy resistance and metastases early.A way of predicting patients' outcome is by using prognostic factors. The most commonly used are clinical features, eg age, gender, metastases. Biomarker is a synonym for biological markers and is defined as "a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processor or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention" [3]. Biomarkers are currently already being used for screening, diagnosis, prognosis and monito
%K Ewing sarcoma
%K prognostic
%K biomarkers
%U http://www.clinicalsarcomaresearch.com/content/2/1/7