Recent Advances in Biomarker Discovery: Are We Closer to Preventing or Slowing Parkinson’s Disease?
A special issue of Brain Sciences (ISSN 2076-3425). This special issue belongs to the section "Neurodegenerative Diseases".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 December 2026 | Viewed by 162
Special Issue Editor
Interests: Parkinson’s disease biomarkers; disease modification and prevention; clinical trial design in neurodegeneration; digital and fluid biomarkers
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite decades of intensive research, Parkinson’s disease (PD) remains without proven disease-modifying or preventative therapies. A central contributor to this persistent failure has been our incomplete biological definition of PD, coupled with suboptimal biomarker selection, patient stratification, and outcome measures in clinical trials. Repeated translational disappointments increasingly suggest that limitations in how PD is conceptualized and operationalized may be as consequential as shortcomings in therapeutic development itself.
Over the past several years, the field has undergone rapid evolution. Advances in molecular genetics, fluid biomarkers (including CSF and blood-based assays), neuroimaging modalities, and digital biomarkers derived from wearable and sensor-based technologies are reshaping PD as a biologically heterogeneous condition rather than a single clinical syndrome. Importantly, fluid and imaging biomarkers offer complementary strengths and limitations with respect to scalability, specificity, mechanistic insight, longitudinal monitoring, and feasibility in large trials, while digital biomarkers provide continuous, real-world phenotyping that may bridge biological signal detection with clinical expression. Together, these approaches support a more integrated biomarker framework.
This Special Issue aims to critically examine recent progress in molecular, imaging, fluid, and digital biomarkers across the PD spectrum—from prodromal and preclinical stages to established disease—and to explore how comparative and integrated biomarker strategies can enable biologically grounded disease definitions, improved trial enrichment, and more reliable translation from preclinical models to clinical interventions.
Dr. Zoltan K. Mari
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- Parkinson’s disease biomarkers
- biological disease definition
- prodromal and preclinical Parkinson’s disease
- trial enrichment and patient stratification
- translational neurodegeneration research
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