Pathogenic bacteria and viruses and cancers pose serious long-term threats to human life and health because of their quick or even explosive proliferation in the body. In particular, the global outbreak of COVID-19 in late 2019 has raised high concerns about this major public health emergency. Rapid detection, diagnosis and treatment of bacteria, viruses and cancer cells play an important role in maintaining human life and health. In addition to conventional medical diagnostic and therapeutic means, novel sensing technologies based on certain functional materials have shown promising development prospects for the detection and treatment of viruses, bacteria and cancer cells. However, the transition from novel diagnosis and treatment strategies to clinical validation still faces challenges such as biological activity, stability and reproducibility. Currently, few new technologies are actually used in clinical diagnosis and treatment.

A number of functional materials, with excellent electrical, magnetic, optical and other properties, can be applied to construct biosensors with fast response, high sensitivity and high accuracy. Particularly, nanoscale materials exhibit excellent sensing properties due to their peculiar surface properties, quantum size effects and small-size effects, which can be used for therapeutic purposes through photothermal, magnetothermal and high catalytic activity with promising integration of diagnosis and treatment. With the development of nanomaterials, nano-sensing technology and biotechnology, combination of materials and medical detection are not only committed to controlling the existing large-scale outbreaks and realizing the rapid screening and diagnosis of biomolecules, but also hoped to build a universal detection and diagnosis platform to timely respond to various outbreaks and diseases. In the field of biological materials and medical detection, on the one hand, we need to consider whether the properties of a material can be affected by factors in the biological environment, such as misjudgment of results caused by interference of impurities in a personal body, and the unpredictable quenching caused by detection of substance or impurities on the fluorescence of materials. On the other hand, we need to take into account the toxicity of the material to biomolecules, the controllable and large-scale production of the material, the impact on biological barriers in the in vivo testing, and the realization of integrated diagnosis and treatment. In addition, some nanotechnologies lack specificity in nature, and biosensing technologies should consider how to construct sensing elements (including but not limited to the construction of special microstructure and functional modifications) to ensure a high degree of specificity for the target molecules. Most importantly, in order to respond to large-scale outbreaks such as COVID-19, new diagnostic and treatment technologies should be with high-throughput.

In recent years, Chinese researchers have done a lot of representative work in rational design, preparation, functional modification, exploration of physicochemical mechanisms, and biomedical application of biomaterial-based biosensor technologies. To showcase the latest research achievements of Chinese scientists in the field of biomedical detection and stimulate the wide interest of all sectors of society in biomaterials and novel sensing technologies, the editorial office of Journal of Inorganic Materials invited me as the Guest Editor to organize a topical section on the theme of "Anti-epidemic biomaterials". This topical section contains the latest review articles and research papers related to the detection and diagnosis of viruses, bacteria and cancer cells, involving new biosensor technologies for COVID-19 (electrochemical sensor, SERS biosensor, SPR biosensor, etc.), fluorescence detection technology, anti-bacterial nano-enzyme technology, etc. It is hoped that this topical section will promote the cooperation of researchers and scientists from various fields with different disciplinary backgrounds, and jointly promote the innovation and development of the field of biomedical detection, with a view to changing and optimizing the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases in clinical medicine so as to better benefit human health.