Single-cell biology is considered a new approach to identify and validate disease-specific biomarkers. However, the concern raised by clinicians is how to apply single-cell measurements for clinical practice, translate the message of single-cell systems biology into clinical phenotype or explain alterations of single-cell gene sequencing and function in patient response to therapies. This study is to address the importance and necessity of single-cell gene sequencing in the identification and development of disease-specific biomarkers, the definition and significance of single-cell biology and single-cell systems biology in the understanding of single-cell full picture, the development and establishment of wholecell models in the validation of targeted biological function and the figure and meaning of single-molecule imaging in single cell to trace intrasingle-cell molecule expression, signal, interaction and location. We headline the important role of single-cell biology in the discovery and development of disease-specific biomarkers with a special emphasis on understanding single-cell biological functions, e.g. mechanical phenotypes, single-cell biology, heterogeneity and organization of genome function. We have reason to believe that such multi-dimensional, multi-layer, multi-crossing and stereoscopic single-cell biology definitely benefits the discovery and development of disease-specific biomarkers.

Multiple studies demonstrated that anti-human T lymphocyte immune globulins (ATG) can decrease the incidence of acute and chronic graft rejection in cell or organ transplants. However, further in-depth study indicates that different subgroups may benefit from either different regimes or alteration of them. Studies among renal transplant patients indicate that low immunological risk patients may not gain the same amount of benefit and thus tilt the risk versus benefit consideration. This may hold true for low immunological risk patients receiving other organ transplants and would be worth further investigation. The recovery time of T cells and natural killer (NK) cells also bears consideration and the impact that it has on the severity and incidence of opportunistic infections closely correlated with the dosage of ATG. The use of lower doses of ATG in combination with other induction medications may offer a solution. The finding that ATG may lose efficacy in cases of multiple transplants or re-transplants in the case of heart transplants may hold true for other transplantations. This may lead to reconsideration of which induction therapies would be most beneficial in the clinical setting. These studies on ATG done on different patient groups will naturally not be applicable to all, but the evidence accrued from them as a whole may offer us new and different perspectives on how to approach and potentially solve the clinical question of how to best reduce the mortality associated with chronic host-versus-graft disease.