Biomarkers and surrogate endpoints: Preferred definitions and conceptual framework

genome are dramatically reshaping the research and development pathways for drugs, vaccines, and diagnostics. The growth in the number of molecular entities entering the drug development pipeline has accelerated as a consequence of powerful discovery and screening technologies such as combinatorial chemistry, mass spectrometry, high throughput screening, celland tissue-based DNA microarrays, and proteomic approaches.1 As a consequence, there is an escalating number of therapeutic candidates, which has caused the need for new technologies and strategies to streamline the process to make safe and effective therapies available to patients. One approach to the achievement of more expeditious and informative therapeutic research is the use of precise clinical measurement tools to determine disease progression and the effects of interventions (drugs, surgery, and vaccines). For example, gene-based approaches such as single nucleotide polymorphism maps are now being developed to distinguish the molecular and cellular basis for variations in clinical response to therapy.2 Another approach is the use of a wide array of analytical tools to assess biological parameters, which are referred to as biomarkers. Biomarker measurements can help explain empirical results of clinical trials by relating the effects of interventions on molecular and cellular pathways to clinical responses. In doing so, biomarkers provide an avenue for researchers to gain a mechanistic understanding of the differences in clinical response that may be influenced by uncontrolled variables (for example, drug metabolism). There are a variety of ways that biomarker measurements can aid in the development and evaluation of COMMENTARY