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Fang. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2020;6:1 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2019.42 Metastasis and Treatment

Editorial Open Access

Introduction to this Special Issue: “Biomarker
Discovery and Precision Medicine”

Bingliang Fang

Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 77030,
USA.

Correspondence to: Prof. Bingliang Fang, Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, The University of Texas MD
Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, USA. E-mail: bfang@mdanderson.org

How to cite this article: Fang B. Introduction to this Special Issue: “Biomarker Discovery and Precision Medicine”. J Cancer
Metastasis Treat 2020;6:1. http://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2019.42

Received: 4 Dec 2019 Accepted: 5 Dec 2019 Published: 7 Jan 2020

Science Editor: Judy S. Crabtree Copy Editor: Jing-Wen Zhang Production Editor: Tian Zhang

With advances in genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, blooming data have been
available for exploring molecular alternations in cancers. Many of these molecular alternations have been
investigated as biomarkers for cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and precision therapies. It is my privilege to
introduce this Special Issue of the Journal of Cancer Metastasis and Treatment, which contains four review
articles and four original articles that focus on the topic of biomarker discoveries for cancer diagnosis and
precision therapy.

Solid tumors are known to shed their cellular components (proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, glycosaminoglycans,
and metabolites) or malignant cells themselves into peripheral blood. Some of these molecules are already
[1,2]
used as biomarkers for cancer screenings and follow up tests in clinics . The advent of new technologies
in genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and cell biology analyses has dramatically expanded the scope
of circulating tumor biomarkers from traditional tumor-associated antigens to circulating tumor cells,
circulating tumor nucleic acids (cell free DNA and miRNA), exosomes, and plasma proteomics. The tests
[3]
on circulating tumor cells or tumor-specific nucleic acid in blood are also referred to as liquid biopsies .
Three review articles in this Special Issue describe recent advances and challenges in liquid biopsy.
[4]
Lai et al. reviewed the use of membrane lipid-binding ligands in isolating subtypes of exosomes or
extracellular vesicles for improvement of discovery and detection of disease-associated biomarkers in
[5]
peripheral blood. Huang et al. discussed advances in developing new devices, such as microfluidics
and nanotechnology, for capturing and molecular characterization of circulating tumor cells. Bookland

© The Author(s) 2020. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
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