OBJECTIVES: Globally, the consideration of subgroup analyses is an emerging topic in health care evaluation; however, it is unclear to what extent the consideration of biomarkers is relevant to Asian healthcare systems. In particular, the use of biomarkers is expected to play a large role in cancer treatments, as these are often expensive and indicated in small populations. The aim of this study was to investigate how the proportion of cancer trials considering biomarkers in six Asian countries compared to the USA and the world. METHODS: ClinicalTrials.gov was searched for all cancer trials that considered the use of biomarkers, by using search terms such as ‘diagnostic marker’. We assessed the number of trials being carried out in six Asian countries: Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and Taiwan. The results were compared to all cancer trials conducted in these countries, in the USA, and globally. RESULTS: Proportions of cancer trials considering biomarkers differed between the countries assessed, with Taiwan having the highest percentage of just over 20%, whereas Malaysia and Thailand had the lowest proportions with 5.2% and 5.4%, respectively. Interestingly, Malaysia and the Philippines had fewest cancer trials in general, with only 77 and 87 cancer trials having been conducted in these countries. This compared to 28,414 cancer trials being conducted worldwide, 3,848 of which (13.5%) considered biomarkers. This proportion was similar in the USA, where 13.1% of cancer trials included some use of markers. CONCLUSIONS: It is clear that the consideration of biomarkers in cancer trials is common in the more developed healthcare markets in Asia such as Singapore and Taiwan, where proportions of cancer trials taking this into account were higher than in the USA and globally. Smaller Asian markets such as Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand appear to lag behind in the trend towards subgroup analysis.