Methods and biomarkers for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer and other diseases: towards personalized medicine.

The rapid development of new diagnostic procedures, the mapping of the human genome, progress in mapping genetic polymorphisms, and recent advances in nucleic acid- and protein chip technologies are driving the development of personalized therapies. This breakthrough in medicine is expected to be achieved largely due to the implementation of "lab-on-the-chip" technology capable of performing hundreds, even thousands of biochemical, cellular and genetic tests on a single sample of blood or other body fluid. Focusing on a few disease-specific examples, this review discusses selected technologies and their combinations likely to be incorporated in the "lab-on-the-chip" and to provide rapid and versatile information about specific diseases entities.