World Cancer Day 2025: Biomarker Solutions in Cancer
February 4, 2025
Tuesday the 4th of February is World Cancer Day. At Nordic Bioscience, we are dedicated to developing biomarker solutions that provide valuable insights on cancer, enabling drug developers to improve cancer treatment options.
In honor of this day, we would like to share a paper by our ontology team, which unveils a promising avenue for harnessing PRO-C12 as a non-invasive serum biomarker, enabling the quantification of type XII collagen fragments in cancer patients.
With increased stiffness and remodeling often driving tumor growth and metastasis, the extracellular matrix (ECM) plays a crucial role in cancer progression.
Produced by cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), type XII collagen is a key regulator of ECM organization, stabilizing type I collagen fibrils, contributing to ECM stiffening, and facilitating a pro-invasive tumor microenvironment (TME). In our study, we developed the PRO-C12 ELISA, a non-invasive tool to monitor type XII collagen fragments in serum that is related to ECM stiffening and CAF activity, providing critical insights into tumor biology and metastasis risk.
By quantifying type XII collagen fragments in serum, clinicians and drug developers gain a powerful tool to non-invasively assess CAF-driven mechanisms. PRO-C12 is relevant for diverse cancer types and stages, paving the way for its integration into diagnostic workflows and clinical trials.
Article: Type XII collagen is elevated in serum from patients with solid tumors: a non-invasive biomarker of activated fibroblasts
