Ion channel expression as promising cancer biomarker.

Cancer is a disease with marked heterogeneity in both response to therapy and survival. Clinical and histopathological characteristics have long determined prognosis and therapy. The introduction of molecular diagnostics has heralded an explosion in new prognostic factors. Overall, histopathology, immunohistochemistry and molecular biology techniques have described important new prognostic subgroups in the different cancer categories. Ion channels and transporters (ICT) are a new class of membrane proteins which are aberrantly expressed in several types of human cancers. Besides regulating different aspect of cancer cell behavior, ICT can now represent novel cancer biomarkers. A summary of the data obtained so far and relative to breast, prostate, lung, colorectal, esophagus, pancreatic and gastric cancers are reported. Special emphasis is given to those studies aimed at relating specific ICT or a peculiar ICT profile with current diagnostic methods. Overall, we are close to exploit ICTs for diagnostic, prognostic or predictive purposes in cancer. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Membrane channels and transporters in cancers.