Markers can help with assessing prognosis, surveilling patients after surgical removal of tumors, and even predicting drug-response and monitor therapy.
[2] The markers can't be used to give patients a diagnosis but can be compared with the result of other tests like biopsy or imaging.
They were previously widely used, but they have largely been replaced by oncofetal antigens and monoclonal antibodies, due to disadvantages such as most of them lacking organ specificity.
Rising levels of tumor marker does not necessarily reflect a growing malignancy but can result from things like unrelated illnesses.
Assaying tumor markers were significantly improved after the creation of ELISA and RIA techniques and the advancement of monoclonal antibodies in the 1960s and 1970s.
Tumor markers are mainly used in clinical medicine to support a diagnosis and monitor the state of malignancy or reocurrence of cancer.