Omics approaches to identify potential biomarkers of inflammatory diseases in the focal adhesion complex

Inflammatory diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease require recurrent invasive tests, including blood tests, radiology and endoscopic evaluation for diagnosis, assessment of disease activity and to determine optimal therapeutic strategies. ‘Bedside’ simple biomarkers could be used in all phases of patient management to avoid unnecessary investigation and guide further management. The focal adhesion complex has been implicated in the pathogenesis of multiple inflammatory diseases including inflammatory bowel disease, rheumatoid arthritis and multiple sclerosis. Utilising ‘omics approaches has proven to be an efficient method to identify biomarkers from within the focal adhesion complex in the field of cancer medicine and predictive biomarkers are paving the way for the success of precision medicine for cancer patients, but inflammatory diseases have lagged behind in this respect. This review explores the current status of biomarker prediction for inflammatory diseases from within the focal adhesion complex using ‘omics techniques and looks forward to future potential avenues for biomarker identification.