Biomarkers and Baseline Study -- Google's new moonshot health project

A Biomarker is "a biological molecule found in blood, other body fluids, or tissues that is a sign of a normal or abnormal process, or of a condition or disease." Typically biomarkers are used to diagnose a disease. For example, prostate-specific antigen (PSA) is a biomarker used to screen for prostrate cancer. LDL represents "bad cholesterol" in the blood and hence is a biomarker for heart disease. DNA from a pathogen (e.g. malaria) is a biomarker for infection by that pathogen. Biomarkers play a central role in modern medicine.

The current mindset is to focus on a specific disease and then identify molecules that are likely to be associated with the disease e.g. tumor antigen from lung cancer cells. However this narrow search for biomarkers focuses mainly on clearly defined disorders and the most pathological case.

Another approach would be to collect a wide spectrum of biomarkers from healthy people and then use this set as a reference to compare both healthy and non-healthy people. This strategy may allow the identification of pre-disease states and a finer classification of  disease states.

The latter is the goal of the new Google Project called Baseline Study (Verge):

"Project Baseline will use Google's computational power to identify "biomarkers" in the data that could help people stave off or avoid health issues. Medical science has traditionally discovered biomarkers for late stage diseases, but it's Google's hope that Project Baseline will also be able to crunch through data to detect tendencies in our bodies that can be addressed before they become life-threatening.

Dr. Conrad posits an example where the data allows researchers to pick out a biomarker that shows some people can break down fatty foods efficiently. Others, he suggests, may lack the marker, putting them at risk from heart disease. By identifying such trends before the disease has become too severe and treatment is necessary, Project Baseline's information could suggest people change their behavior before their first heart attack, or enable scientists to develop something to help at-risk people break down fatty foods."

The project will yield thousands of new biomarkers evaluated in thousands of people, who will be tracked over time. In this way, changes in the biomarkers may give an indication of the early onset of a disease or even a pre-diseases state. Instead of using one biomarker to determine the presence of a disease, a range of biomarkers could be used to describe the onset, progression, and severity of a disease along with the efficacy of various treatments.

Project Baseline Study is a promising medical venture.

Figure 1. Project Baseline Study will identify and evaluate a large number of biomarkers.