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European Journal of BioMedical Research
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doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.18088/ejbmr.1.1.2015.pp1-2
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The era of nanotechnology and omics sciences
Wen Li
IHRC, Inc. Atlanta, GA, USA
Email: [email protected]
Received: 6 April 2015; Accepted: 8 April 2015; Published: 9 April 2015
Editorial
In the statistic report of “Top 10 Unnatural Causes of
Death” from World Health Organizatin, Ischeamic heart
disease, stroke, lower respiratory infection, cancers and
HIV/AIDS infections are the major causes of death worldwide in 2012 (1). Among these diseases, cardiovascular
diseases top the list with about 17.5 million death each
year. Communicable diseases, such as HIV/AIDS, malaria or tuberculosis are responsible for 23% of global
death, while noncommunicable diseases, such as cancers,
diabetes and chronic diseases, cause 68% death. American
Cancer Society has released the report of “Cancer Facts
and Figures in 2015”, in which they predicted that about
589,430 American people will die from cancers this year,
or 1,620 per day. The leading cancer type for women is
breast cancer (29%) and male is prostate cancer (26%)
(2). Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
has estimated that in United States, about 2 million people
are sicken with antibiotic-resistant infections each year,
among which about 23,000 people died (3).
Due to the increasing mortality of various diseases
mentioned above, medical cost for inpatients has been
doubled or tripled over a decade. With the increase of
multidrug resistance (4), most of the patients relapse from
initial treatment and have to take much higher dosage of
drugs and therefore higher burden of healthcare expenses
(5). All of these stimulate the development of more advanced, personalized and accurate molecular methods to
fight against various medical problems.
With the progress of biomedical science and bioengineering, we now enter the era of ‘nano’ and ‘omics’
sciences (6-8). ‘Nano’ sciences or nanotechnology, referes
to the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension
sized from 1 to 100 nanometers. In cooperation with surface science, organic chemistry, molecular biology and
biomedical/chemical engineering, thousand types of nanoparticles have been designed to deliver various anti-cancer
and anti-microbial drugs. Examples of such nanoparticles
include polymeric nanoparticles, micelles, gold nanoparticles and quantum dot (6,9). These nanoparticles have
solved the problem of multidrug resistance; and possess
higher specificity, stronger potency and lower cell toxicity than traditional method. Meanwhile, nano-chips and
nano-devices have emerged with their unique character of
drug delivery, gene transfection, living cell interrogation
by fabricating an engineered extra-cellular environment.
The ‘omics’ science was raised from the fast growth of
genomics technology and extended to four general areas:
genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. Each individual patient is digitalized into ‘big data’
and the biomedical information could be specified to each
single cell or organ (10).
Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved.
Besides the basic cancer treatment, such as surgical
removal of tumor, radiology and chemotherapy, new advanced molecular technologies have been extensively applied to the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. One example is the identification and validation of biomarkers.
Biomarkers are the signature of cancer diseases , containing crucial information for personalized cancer diagnosis, treatment or prevention. Oncologists have been working for decades to identify biomarkers that drive tumor
intiation or progression (11). Several well-studied inhibitors, such as tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI), anaplastic
lymphoma kinase (ALK) and epidermal growth factor
receptor (EGFR) are widely used to inhibit cancer development (12).
Genomics studies extend the limitation of biomarkers
discovery and clinical validation (13,14). Next generation
sequencing (NGS) is among the most advanced technology developed during the last decade. It has been applied
to the sequencing of bacteria, virus, parasite, yeast and
human cells and proved to be fast, low cost and highly
accurate. After the intial whole genome sequencing, more
specific analysis, such as targeted sequencing, functional
sequencing, parallel sequencing and RNAseq have been
developed to locate the exact gene mutations and furthermore identify specific biomarkers in each cancer patients
(15).
To further identify disease-associated proteins or novel drug transporter or cell surface antigens, transcriptomics and proteomics analysis are required to characterize
proteins in a large-scale. Due to the high variations of
protein expression, structure and functions at different
time period, proteomics work brings double or triple complexicity than genomics analysis. By using MALDI-TOF
MS (matrix-assisted laser desorption ionisation time-offlight mass spectrometry), LC-MS/MS (nano-capillary
reverse phase HPLC column with a mass spectrometer)
and data analysis (Mascot, MaxQuant or DeepQuanTR),
we can not only quantify the protein expression level at
different stages and detect the post-translational modification, but also identify the feedback mechanism in the
regulatory pathways (16).
These advanced techniques, combined with bioinformatics, material science and traditional biochemistry,
have been used globally to overcome multiple medical
obstacles. Due to the large volume and high complicity of
personal medical database, proper management of individual’s ‘big data’ could be also essential for the development of more personalized medicine, drug binding target
or biomedical therapies.
European Journal of BioMedical Research (EJBMR)
is devoted to provide an excellent communication plat1
Wen Li 2015 | Volume1 | Issue 1
form for all the medical-related research scientists in the
world. EJBMR welcomes primary research articles, protocols, review articles, mini-reviews and short reports.
The journal is dedicated to publish high quality, original
and novel studies in multiple research areas, including
cancer reasearch, infectious diseases, cardiovascular diseases, chrnonic lung diseases, diabetes, genetic diseases
in both clinical report and basic research. We strongly
encourage submissions of multidisciplinary studies that
combine the experimental and computational analysis that
address biomedical problems.
As a growing journal, we do not let the criteria to limit
the creation, passion and imagination of our scientists as
every scientist’s idea and effort should be appreciated. A
final decision on pubshing a particular paper will be made
base on the editor’s opinion on the impact of the paper in
it’s specific field and an evaluation of its existing and potential values. We also highly respect the readers evaluation and comments from our previously published papers
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References
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World Health Organization. 2014
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2015 American Cancer Society. 2015
3. Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Antibiotic
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4. Ambudkar SV, Dey S, Hrycyna CA, Ramachandra
M, Pastan I. and Gottesman MM. Biochemical, cellular,
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Annu Rev Pharmacol Toxicol. 1999, 39: 361-398.
5. Pieters R, Hongo T, Loonen AH, Huismans DR, Broxterman HJ, Hahlen K. and Veerman AJ. Different types of
non-P-glycoprotein mediated multiple drug resistance in
children with relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukaemia. Br
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future medicine. J Cutan Aesthet Surg. 2010, 3: 32-33.
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Expert Rev Proteomics. 2014, 11: 179-205.
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Paules RS. Platforms for biomarker analysis using highthroughput approaches in genomics, transcriptomics,
proteomics, metabolomics, and bioinformatics. IARC
scientific publications. 2011, 121-142.
15. Yadav SS, Li J, Lavery HJ, Yadav KK. and Tewari
AK. Next-generation sequencing technology in prostate
cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and personalized treatment.
Urol Oncol. 2015.
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K, Meyer HE, Havers W. and Eggert A. Proteomics: techniques and applications in cancer research. Klin Padiatr.
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