Translational Biomarkers: Ethics Concern

Wiwanitkit V*

Professor, Hainan Medical University, China.

*Corresponding Author

Viroj Wiwanitkit,
Visiting professor, Hainan Medical University,
China.
E-mail: wviroj@yahoo.com

Article Type : Editorial
Recieved: October 15, 2015; Published: October 19, 2015;

Citation: Wiwanitkit V (2015) Translational Biomarkers: Ethics Concern. J Translational Biomarkers Diagn. 01(1e), 1.

Copyright: Wiwanitkit V© 2015. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Translational biomarker is the new thing in laboratory medicine. With advent of several new sciences in present post genomics,many translation researches lead to several new useful biomarkers. Bai et al. reported that “there have been some successes in qualifying biomarkers and applying them to drug development and clinical treatment of various diseases [1].” It is no doubt that the new biomarkers are expected to be highly effective in diagnostic purpose. However, an important facet in laboratory medicine is the ethics. Ethics on translation research must be strictly followed.

It should be noted that the translation research results might pose “clinically actionable information [2].” Potential long-term implications of test results throughout the lifespan of the patient have to be carefully considered [2]. Especially for the pediatric case, this is a very big ethical concern [2, 3]. “Informed consent, patient engagement, privacy and confidentiality and data sharing” are still needed as simple concern in medicine [4]. “Ethical, legal, and social implications” of any new translational biomarker must be justified [5].