Biomarkers in Medicine

Dear Colleagues,

The Topical Collection, "Biomarkers", will be focused on the diagnostics of a plethora of pathologies using biomarkers in the blood, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF), and other body fluids. These diseases include widely-spread ailments, such as cancer, diabetes, neurodegenerative Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, as well as other pathological conditions. Due to the growing elderly population, these diseases are on the rise in modern society and combatting them is a global issue. Early, or even pre-clinical, diagnostics of pathological conditions at the stage when the clinical symptoms are not yet obvious are of significant therapeutic value, and would enable administration of protective or preventive treatments. This may lead to a significant reduction in the social and healthcare costs of these diseases, as early diagnostics will culminate in more efficient treatment.

The molecular constitution of blood and other body fluids has been shown to be highly representative of the physiological state of an individual. Body-fluid specimen analyses (liquid biopsies) are minimally invasive and a relatively cheap means of early disease detection and convenient monitoring of disease response to therapeutic intervention. These approaches are tightly aligned with the concept of personalized healthcare. Over the last few years, a range of new biomarkers, associated with disease pathology, were discovered, and an arsenal of novel robust diagnostic assays for the (presymptomatic) detection of pathological conditions was established. Biodiagnostics is a rapidly expanding field, yet many questions and problems need to be solved. Some soluble candidate biomarkers failed to demonstrate clinical utility, which may be caused by insufficient association with the disease, or because their validation has been limited to a subset of patients, or by technical limitations in the detection methods.

The present Topical Collection aims at bringing primary research and review articles together to summarize state-of-the-art problems, solutions, and future directions in the biomarker and biodiagnostics field, based on the analysis of various body fluids. Your contribution is very welcome!

Prof. Dr. Ludmilla Morozova-Roche
Dr. Cornelis F.M. Sier
Collection Editors

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