The interest in identifying circulating soluble biomarkers for malignant
pleural mesothelioma is quite high. The studies aim at identifying a tool that could
enable early detection of the disease before symptoms develop. Blood-based fibulin-3
and osteopontin studies are currently ongoing. Serum concentrations of YKL-40 had a
moderate ability to discriminate between mesothelioma and other clinically relevant
controls. Despite a large number of biomarkers being reported for mesothelioma in the
literature, mesothelin remains the single-best blood-based biomarker for the cancer and
is considered to be the ‘gold standard’.
Keywords: Biomarkers, fibulin-3, mesothelin, oseopontin, YKL-40.
