"Current cancer biomarkers suffer from low diagnostic sensitivity and specificity and have not yet made a major impact on reducing cancer burden. Proteomic methods based on mass spectrometry have matured significantly over the past few years and hold promise to deliver candidate markers for diagnosis, prognosis or monitoring therapeutic response. Because of the complex nature of biological fluids such as plasma, biomarker discovery efforts using proteomics have not as yet delivered any novel tumor markers.

"Genitourinary (prostate, bladder, and kidney) cancers together comprise the most common type of human neoplasms. As a common feature to these types of malignancy, the disease is frequently asymptomatic at its earlier stages, when curative treatment is most likely to be successful. Moreover, available tests for genitourinary cancer screening (mostly directed to prostate cancer) are characterized by variable (usually low) sensitivity and specificity, preventing a consensual support for their routine use by the medical community.

"microRNAs (miRNAs) are an abundant class of small non-coding RNAs that function as gene regulators. Although deregulation of miRNA expression is involved in the initiation and progression of tumorigenesis, the underlying mechanisms of miRNA deregulation in human cancer are still largely unknown. Increasing evidence indicates that transcriptional deregulations, epigenetic alterations, mutations, DNA copy number abnormalities and defects in the miRNA biogenesis machinery might contribute to miRNA deregulation in human cancer.

"Molecular imaging of receptors expressed on the surface of tumor cells is becoming a major field of investigation in clinical oncology, especially for the detection of cancer at its earliest stages. Nowadays, MRI, microcomputed tomography (microCT), ultrasound, positron emission tomography (PET), optical coherence tomography (OCT), and other major imaging systems are available to scientists and clinicians. Each technique has advantages and limitations, thus making them complementary.

"Lung cancer is a leading cause of cancer death, with the prognosis adversely affected by late diagnosis. Early diagnosis of lung cancer is desirable, but current evidence does not support the application of screening with techniques such as chest radiography, sputum cytology or computed tomography. Breath analysis, which includes gaseous phase analysis that measures volatile organic compounds using electronic noses, exhaled nitric oxide, and exhaled breath condensate (EBC), has been proposed as a non-invasive and simple technique to investigate neoplastic processes in the airways.