Epigenetic Biomarkers and Applications for Liquid Biopsy Based Diagnostics

Dear Colleagues,

Epigenetic changes are associated with many clinical indications and health issues, such as aging and lifestyle; diabetes; cardio-, neurological and psychiatric diseases; and various cancers. Similar to clinical epigenetics, the liquid biopsy approach primarily emerged in the field of cancer diagnostics. In recent years, other common diseases have also been studied to further implement the concept of liquid biopsy for these clinical indications. The detection of tissue-specific and disease-related epigenetic modifications at the DNA, RNA and protein levels in peripheral blood or other sample types has the potential to provide molecular diagnostic methods to improve clinical decision-making in precision medicine in the near future. The detection of epigenetic changes is already being utilized in many clinical settings, so these approaches have the potential to complement or replace genetic mutation detection approaches. There have been dramatic improvements in early cancer diagnostics over the years. More than a decade ago, epigenomics began with a single DNA methylation marker; now, Grail currently uses more than 100,000 DNA methylation sites for the detection of cancer-specific epigenetics alterations in cell-free DNA from blood plasma. By building on these improvements, in the future, we expect that the combination of epigenetic markers and technical analytical developments will improve the liquid biopsy approach and pave the way for a wide range of innovative applications.

In line with the journal’s mission—IJMS is a journal of molecular science; therefore, pure clinical studies will not be suitable but clinical submissions with biomolecular experiments are welcomed—we aim to focus on the technical, methodological and molecular aspects of ongoing work in the field by linking together epigenetic biomarkers and liquid biopsy or other non- and minimal- invasive analytical concepts. The results of this endeavor will be presented in this Special Issue, entitled "Epigenetic Biomarkers and Applications of Liquid-Biopsy-based Diagnostics". Therefore, we invite colleagues from this field to present their approaches to epigenetics and biomarker research. This special issue is assisted by Topical Advisory Panel Member Dr. Christa Noehammer (christa.noehammer@ait.ac.at).

Dr. Andreas Weinhäusel
Guest Editor

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