Convergence of biomarkers, bioinformatics and nanotechnology for individualized cancer treatment

Recent advances in biomarker discovery, biocomputing and nanotechnology have raised new opportunities in the emerging fields of personalized medicine (in which disease detection, diagnosis and therapy are tailored to each individual's molecular profile) and predictive medicine (in which genetic and molecular information is used to predict disease development, progression and clinical outcome). Here, we discuss advanced biocomputing tools for cancer biomarker discovery and multiplexed nanoparticle probes for cancer biomarker profiling, in addition to the prospects for and challenges involved in correlating biomolecular signatures with clinical outcome. This bio-nano-info convergence holds great promise for molecular diagnosis and individualized therapy of cancer and other human diseases.