In the last couple of years EU Policy makers and grant funding bodies have been championing the desire to break the translational bottle-neck.  As researchers focus more on breaking the translational bottle neck they have started to look more closely at the kinds of biomarkers which will enable this.  These circulating biomarkers such as circulating DNA (ctDNA/cfDNA/cftDNA), miRNA/microRNA, circulating tumour cells & exosomes are indeed useful and we have been covering them in the last few conferences with some great data and presentations from opinion leaders in the respective areas.  We have heard from researchers about how they perform their biased and unbiased discovery on these biomarkers and then validate and move them into the clinic so that the blood biopsy tests can be realized.

This year the scientific committee intends to open up the focus area to include other kinds of least-invasive and non-invasive biomarkers so that this conference become the annual gathering where bioinformaticians, discovery scientists, clinicians and engineers can all meet up under one roof and discuss broad collaborations by applying lessons learned from one kind of biomarker to another – and hopefully facilitate the diagnostic development workflows.