Cell-Free Nucleic Acids as Precision Biomarkers for Therapeutic Decision-Making Across Diseases
A special issue of Journal of Personalized Medicine (ISSN 2075-4426). This special issue belongs to the section "Disease Biomarkers".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 August 2026
Special Issue Editor
Interests: cancer genomics and epigenomics; cancer biomarker discovery; cancer drug resistance; predictive cancer biology; immuno-oncogenomics; cancer metastasis; early cancer detection
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Cell-free nucleic acids (cfNAs), including circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA), cell-free DNA (cfDNA), and RNA species such as mRNA, microRNA, and long non-coding RNA, are emerging as powerful biomarkers for liquid biopsy. These molecules can be collected from minimally invasive sources, such as plasma, serum, or saliva, providing dynamic insights into disease processes. The most established clinical applications are in oncology, where the U.S. FDA has approved cfNA-based liquid biopsy assays to guide targeted therapies against EGFR, KRAS, PIK3CA, MET, ALK, and PARP. Beyond cancer, cfNA analysis is gaining traction in other areas, with direct therapeutic implications. In prenatal and maternal–fetal medicine, fetal RHD genotyping from maternal plasma enables targeted prophylaxis in RhD-negative pregnancies. In transplantation, donor-derived cfDNA is increasingly used to monitor rejection and guide immunosuppressive therapy. Additionally, cfNAs are being studied for cardiovascular disease, to evaluate tissue injury, and in infectious diseases through pathogen cfDNA sequencing, which may inform antimicrobial strategies. Rapid advances in next-generation sequencing, digital PCR, and microfluidics, along with bioinformatics and machine learning, are accelerating the discovery of predictive cfNA signatures and their clinical application. For this Special Issue, we invite reviews, original research articles, and methodological studies on cfNA-based liquid biopsy, including biomarker discovery, analytical and computational methods, machine learning prediction, and translational applications across various diseases.
Dr. Manny D. Bacolod
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- liquid biopsy
- cell-free nucleic acids
- cancer
- therapeutic decision
- cell-free DNA
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