Liquid biopsy has emerged as a transformative, minimally invasive strategy for disease detection and longitudinal monitoring through the analysis of circulating molecular components, including cell-free DNA (cfDNA), cell-free RNA, extracellular vesicles, and circulating proteins in bodily fluids. Its central objective is to enable a continuum of precision clinical interventions, from early detection and diagnosis to therapeutic guidance and disease surveillance, thereby improving patient outcomes (
Figure 1). Holistic integrative medicine is a patient-centered, systems-level framework that integrates prevention, screening, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation into whole-process disease management. Advances in high-throughput sequencing and digital polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have markedly improved the detection of tumor-derived alterations in plasma, urine, and saliva. These technologies have enhanced both sensitivity and specificity in identifying genetic and epigenetic changes. In oncology, circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) captures the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of tumors and provides a dynamic window into disease evolution, with resolution often surpassing that of single-site tissue biopsies
1. Importantly, the scope of liquid biopsy is rapidly expanding beyond cancer to include prenatal testing, infectious diseases, neurodegenerative disorders, and immune-mediated conditions.
Despite these advances, key challenges persist. The low abundance of tumor-derived cfDNA, particularly in early-stage disease, as well as the variability introduced during sample collection, processing, and storage, continue to limit clinical robustness
2. However, ongoing innovations in single-molecule sequencing, fragmentomics, and bioinformatics are accelerating the clinical translation of liquid biopsy technologies
3. This Editorial highlights emerging paradigms in liquid biopsy research, spanning technological and economic considerations, expanding clinical applications, and integrative insights from immunogenomics and microbiome studies. Notably, we discuss pioneering work on cell-free mitochondrial DNA (cf-mtDNA) fragmentomics, illustrating how exploration beyond nuclear genomes may open new avenues for early cancer detection and precision medicine.