Dear Colleagues,

Cardiovascular diseases including atherosclerosis, myocardial infarction, heart failure, and their complications contribute significantly to the burden of morbidity and mortality for all people. Even though massive advances have been made in treating cardiovascular diseases, more sensitive protein and other biomarker assays have been clinically used to detect myocardial injury, although we remain far from realizing improvements in cardiovascular diseases risk assessment. Globally, cardiovascular diseases remain the leading cause of disease burden. Therefore, accurate early diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases has important clinical significance. There is an urgent need to develop new diagnostic markers for cardiovascular diseases.

Over the past decade, extensive optimization of protein biomarkers such as CK-MB, cTn, cMyBP-C, NT-proBNP, and C-reactive protein have led to the development of high-sensitivity assays, which have proven to be extremely beneficial in clinical practice. A novel approach in the combining complementary biomarkers is highly attractive. Recently, ncRNA species, including miRNA, lncRNAs and circRNAs, have emerged as biomarkers of cardiac injury that can complement protein biomarkers with greater specificity. The development of new biomarkers of cardiovascular disease can facilitate the understanding of the molecular mechanisms by which cardiovascular disease occurs, predict the disease risk, determine the disease trajectory along with the prognosis, and provide guidance in the formulation of personalized treatments.

In this Special Issue, we will focus on current research advances in molecular diagnosis and novel biomarkers of cardiovascular diseases. The goal of this Special Issue is to provide the most updated and comprehensive discoveries and opinions to discuss biological characteristics of potential biomarkers as well as emphasize their clinical significance, which may provide the foundation for future applications in cardiovascular disease diagnosis.

Prof. Lihua Sun

Guest Editor