Advances in Molecular Epidemiology and Innovative Diagnostic Strategies for Infectious Disease Control

Dear Colleagues,

The global effort to eliminate major infectious diseases including viral hepatitis, HIV, syphilis, and other emerging pathogens relies on early detection, timely diagnosis, and strong linkage to care. Comprehensive screening and continuous epidemiological surveillance are essential in enabling targeted prevention, rapid outbreak response, and evidence-based resource allocation. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the urgent need for rapid, accurate, scalable, and cost-effective diagnostic platforms that can support both routine monitoring and emergency preparedness.

Recent advances such as high-throughput sequencing, extraction-free molecular diagnostics, point-of-care technologies, sero-molecular surveillance systems, epidemiological modelling, and integrated public health data demonstrate transformative potential. However, rigorous scientific evaluation is required to assess feasibility, implementation, cost-effectiveness, and real-world impacts across diverse settings, particularly in low- and middle-income countries where the infectious disease burden remains disproportionately high.

This Special Issue will focus on advances in molecular epidemiology and innovative diagnostic strategies for infectious disease control, welcoming high-quality original research and reviews on molecular surveillance, novel diagnostics, disease burden monitoring, outbreak investigation, and implementation science.

Through multidisciplinary collaboration among global researchers, clinicians, laboratory scientists, public health professionals, and policymakers, this Special Issue will strengthen our diagnostic and surveillance capacity and accelerate progress toward infectious disease control and global health security. We warmly welcome your submissions.

Dr. Ko Ko
Dr. Inn Kynn Khaing
Dr. Zayar Phyo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Pathogens is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.