Biomarkers are at the heart of modern cancer treatment, yet patients rarely hear about them from drug companies. For pharma, these tests complicate the marketing pitch—they signal a drug isn’t for everyone and shift the focus from a broad promise to specific evidence. At this point, the silence feels less like neutrality and more like avoidance. If companies started educating patients about biomarkers, it would build trust, show they’re keeping pace with medicine, and help people make truly informed decisions. Pharma has to decide whether it’s just selling pills or wants to be a responsible partner in the future of healthcare. They don’t need to sell biomarkers, but they do need to stop pretending they aren’t changing the entire game.
or decades, pharma companies have been very comfortable explaining what their drugs do.
They have been far less comfortable explaining how doctors decide who should get them.
That gap matters more now than ever — because cancer treatment is no longer primarily about “Which drug is best?” but “Which drug is best for this specific patient?” And that question is increasingly answered by biomarkers.
Yet outside of oncology clinics and academic journals, most patients barely understand what a biomarker is, let alone why it determines their treatment path. That’s a problem — not just for patients, but for the credibility of the entire cancer care ecosystem.
Pharma companies should explain the value of biomarkers to patients. And not doing so reveals something uncomfortable about how pharma still views its role.
What Biomarkers Actually Are (in human terms)
A biomarker is not a buzzword. It’s not a tech trend. It’s not a marketing angle.
A biomarker is simply a measurable biological signal — a mutation, a protein, a gene expression pattern — that helps answer a critical question:
Will this treatment work for this patient?
In cancer, biomarkers can tell doctors whether:
- A tumor is likely to respond to immunotherapy
- A targeted therapy will work or fail
- A drug might be ineffective or even harmful
- A patient qualifies for a clinical trial
- A less aggressive treatment might be enough
In other words, biomarkers shift cancer care from trial-and-error toward evidence-guided personalization.
That is not a small thing. That is a structural change in how medicine works.
Why Patients Rarely Hear About Them from Pharma
If biomarkers are so important, why don’t patients hear more about them from pharmaceutical companies?
Three uncomfortable reasons:
1. Biomarkers reduce drug universality
Biomarkers shrink the addressable market for many drugs. They define who shouldn’t get a drug as much as who should. That’s strategically inconvenient in a sales-driven system.
2. They complicate the story
“Ask your doctor if Drug X is right for you” is simple.
“Ask your doctor if you qualify based on your molecular profile” is not.
Pharma has historically preferred simplicity — even when medicine itself is no longer straightforward.
3. They shift power away from promotion and toward evidence
Biomarkers move decision-making toward diagnostics, data, and clinical nuance — and away from brand-driven influence. That makes marketing less central, not more.
Why This Silence Is Becoming Ethically and Strategically Risky
Patients today:
- Research their conditions deeply
- Join online patient communities
- Read clinical trial data
- Compare treatment pathways
- Question incentives
When patients eventually discover — often after ineffective treatment — that a biomarker test could have changed their trajectory, the emotional reaction is not “Oh well.” It’s:
“Why didn’t anyone tell me this earlier?”
And when pharma brands are absent from that educational moment, they don’t appear neutral — they appear evasive.
Silence is not perceived as restraint. It is perceived as an omission.
What Pharma’s Role Should Be
Pharma should not tell patients which treatment to choose.
Pharma should not override physicians.
Pharma should not turn biomarkers into another manipulative funnel.
But pharma should:
- Explain what biomarkers are
- Explain why they matter
- Explain that testing exists
- Explain that treatment selection is no longer one-size-fits-all
- Encourage patients to have informed discussions with their oncologists
Not because it sells more drugs — but because it aligns pharma with how medicine actually works now.
That’s not marketing. That’s legitimacy.
Yes — pharma companies should explain the value of biomarkers to patients.
Not to steer decisions.
Not to increase prescriptions.
Not to capture data.
But to acknowledge reality: Cancer care is no longer about drugs alone. It’s about matching the right biology to the proper intervention. Patients deserve to understand the system on which their lives depend.
If pharma declines that role, others will fill it—patient communities, startups, advocacy groups, or influencers with far less accountability.
And pharma will once again be surprised to discover that it has lost trust it never realized it was spending.
