Laboratory, Pathology and Biomarker Terms

A result that reads like a label but works as a prediction, since it forecasts which treatments a tumor is likely to answer.

The amount of the protein prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in the blood that is not attached to other proteins.

Two numbers added together, one for the commonest growth pattern and one for the next, describing how far prostate cancer has strayed from normal.

A measurement rather than a substance: the word names how much glucose is in the blood, which is why it takes prefixes.

Answers how the cells look, never how far the disease has traveled, which is why the number is so often quoted alone and misread.

Architecture is the point: how cells sit relative to one another often says more than how any single cell looks.

More cells than there should be in a tissue, which is not the same thing as bigger cells or abnormal ones.

Borrowing the immune system's precision to pick one molecule out of blood and measure how much is there.

A staining method that uses antibodies to make one chosen protein visible in a slice of tissue, while everything else stays pale.

Reading the badges on a cell surface to work out what the cell is and whether a population came from one ancestor.

Research done in a laboratory.

A word about appearance under the microscope that decides which disease a cancer of lymphocytes is, and how fast it must be treated.

A single antibody churned out in bulk by one clone of cells, showing up as a narrow spike on a laboratory trace.

Ink brushed onto the specimen is what keeps the true cut surface identifiable once the tissue has been sliced.

A surface protein the cells that make it barely seem to need, which is precisely what makes it a usable target on tumors.

A pathologist's word for tissue that looks and feels like jelly, because its cells are pouring out the protein that thickens mucus.

A broken bone caused by disease, often by the spread of cancer to the bone.

The document that turns a piece of removed tissue into a diagnosis, and the basis on which most cancer treatment is planned.

PCR rapidly generates millions of copies of a targeted DNA sequence in a test tube, a core technique behind many infection and genetic tests.

The blood a needle can reach, defined by contrast with the marrow where its cells were made rather than by where it flows.