In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Bioinformatics and Biomedicine
(BIBM, https://biod.whu.edu.cn/bibm2025/ )
A biomarker (short for biological marker), is a measurable indicator of some biological state or condition. According to their functions, biomarkers can be categorized as drug-related biomarkers and disease-related biomarkers. Disease-related biomarkers can be further divided in three types: diagnostic biomarkers, which allow for the early detection of a disease in a noninvasive way; predictive biomarkers, which give an indication of the probable effect of a particular treatment on patients, and prognostic biomarkers, which show the progression of disease with or without treatment. Based on their properties, biomarkers can be classified as molecular biomarkers (e.g. genes, noncoding RNAs, lipids or metabolites), tissue biomarkers and digital (imaging) biomarkers.
Although plenty of biomarker-related data, such as expression data, interaction data, sequence data, and imaging data, have been collected and stored in various databases, devising efficient methods used to identify biomarkers remains a daunting task.