New Technologies for Diagnosing Pediatric Tumors Expert Opinion on Medical Diagnostics.

Background: The completion of the Human Genome Project (HGP) has paved the way for new, more detailed and accurate molecular diagnostic classification of cancer. With the information from the HGP, cancers can be categorized not only on the morphology or limited immunohistological markers, but also according to their ‘molecular fingerprints’, such as gene expression profiles. Technologies detecting these signatures have been developed to measure simultaneously multiple genes or proteins in one assay with high sensitivity and specificity. Objective: To evaluate potential innovative new methods of diagnosis and prognosis in pediatric cancers. Methods: A variety of promising new diagnostic technologies was selected using molecular signatures that harness the results from HGP, including DNA microarray, bead-based detection system, multiplexed real-time polymerase chain reaction, MesoScale Discovery and isotope-coded affinity tag, as well as their applications in biomarker discovery for pediatric tumors. Label-...