Specific

• Preferentially (or exclusively) produced in target tissue

• Able to differentiate pathologies

Sensitive

• Early indication of disease before clinical symptoms develop

• Present at low concentrations in controls and exhibits significant increase after injury

• Long half-life

Diagnostic

• Proportional to degree of severity of pathology

Prognostic

• Can predict disease progression

Robust

• Not confounded by unrelated conditions

• Rapid, simple, accurate, and inexpensive detection

Translatable

• Data can be used to bridge pre-clinical and clinical results

Non-invasive

• Released from tissue into accessible fluid sample