Role of Immune Biomarkers in Animal Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

“Biomarker” is a relatively new term that started to have more common use in the literature by the 1990s, and can be described as “a characteristic that is objectively measured and evaluated as an indicator of normal biological processes, pathogenic processes, or pharmacologic responses to a therapeutic intervention”.

A biomarker may consist of individual proteins, gene expression, histology, specific immune response, proteomics, metabolomics, imaging and even clinical observations, and its use in biological studies and clinical practice in veterinary medicine to evaluate health status, risk, diagnosis, prognosis, and progression of disease keeps growing, with new biomarkers being discovered in companion, farm, laboratory, and wildlife animal species, as well as in diverse biological fluids (serum, saliva, urine, etc.) or tissues. However, the research for new biomarkers is not easy since those should be measurable with little or no variability and should also change rapidly and consistently in response to disease alterations or treatment. Moreover, there is a high individual diversity (genetics, epigenetics, habits, environmental effects) and it is hard to identify biomarkers that are able to clearly separate healthy from unhealthy.

Until recently, diseases were considered to be fairly standardized entities, defined by symptoms, macroscopic observations and classical biochemical and histopathological measurements, but, over the past decades, those reductionist approaches have been changed, also shifting the way we think about such diseases.

Nowadays, significant progress in genomics, molecular immunology, and biotechnology, combined with increasing attention on translational research and the beginning of personalized medicine, has resulted in a rapid expansion in the field of immune biomarkers, with high relevance in disease progression and prognosis for several diseases. Additionally, the great expansion of newly available technologies (e.g., DNA and RNA microarrays, protein microarrays, next-generation sequencing, and mass spectrometry) gives us almost immediate access to “big data” repositories (e.g., genes, proteins, miRNAs, and metabolites expression), and more comprehensive insight into the mechanisms of disease, as well as diagnostic and prognostic applications.

The number of publications on immune biomarkers has increased remarkably, and with those studies, also the number and type of recognized immune biomarkers described in the literature that are available for both clinical and nonclinical use; Nevertheless, a lot is still unknown, making this the perfect time to take a broad perspective on the field.

The overall aim of this Special Issue is to increase the discovery and development of immunological biomarkers associated with different animal diseases, and on that note, we invite authors to submit original research papers that address specific developments in immune biomarkers in disease, not only infectious diseases, but also cancer, immunodeficiency, allergy and asthma, autoimmunity, and others. Topics may include but are not limited to immune biomarkers (cellular, molecular, or biochemical).

Dr. Joel Fernando Soares Filipe
Dr. Paola Dall’Ara
Dr. Elisabetta Razzuoli
Dr. Maria Giovanna Ciliberti
Guest Editors

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• immune biomarkers
• animal health and welfare
• immune response