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Simple Summary: Prostate cancer is a heterogeneous disease and a major cause of cancer deaths worldwide. The most widely used prostate cancer biomarker, prostate-specific antigen, lacks sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis of malignant disease. Hence, novel tissue-based biomarkers have emerged for the detection and risk assessment of prostate cancer. Over the past years, liquid biopsy biomarkers introduced a new diagnostic concept to complement current tissue diagnosis strategies. Liquid biopsies non-invasively provide a characterization of heterogenous tumor profiles. Here, we highlight the most prominent tissue and liquid biopsy biomarkers for the detection and risk assessment of prostate cancer. Current strategies for the clinical management of prostate cancer are inadequate for a precise risk stratification between indolent and aggressive tumors. Recently developed tissue-based molecular biomarkers have refined the risk assessment of the disease. The characterization of tissue biopsy components and subsequent identification of relevant tissue-based molecular alterations have the potential to improve the clinical decision making and patient outcomes. However, tissue biopsies are invasive and spatially restricted due to tumor heterogeneity. Therefore, there is an urgent need for complementary diagnostic and prognostic options. Liquid biopsy approaches are minimally invasive with potential utility for the early detection, risk stratification, and monitoring of tumors. In this review, we focus on tissue and liquid biopsy biomarkers for early diagnosis and risk stratification of prostate cancer, including modifications on the genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels. High-risk molecular alterations combined with orthogonal clinical parameters can improve the identification of aggressive tumors and increase patient survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simple Summary: Liquid biopsies provide a non-invasive means to diagnose and profile tumors when tissue is not available. Sequence-based analysis of cell-free DNA (cfDNA) is frequently used to characterize genomic alterations, with a focus on driver mutations or mechanisms of acquired therapy resistance. However, the epigenome of cfDNA also contains additional information about the tumor, which might open new possibilities for clinical applications. Recent highlighted publications are reviewed on the analysis of fragmentation, epigenomic alterations, as well as nucleosome modifications using cfDNA in various cancers. The potential, challenges, and future directions of genomic and epigenomic analysis of cfDNA in oncology are discussed. Cell-free DNA (cfDNA) analysis using liquid biopsies is a non-invasive method to gain insights into the biology, therapy response, mechanisms of acquired resistance and therapy escape of various tumors. While it is well established that individual cancer treatment options can be adjusted by panel next-generation sequencing (NGS)-based evaluation of driver mutations in cfDNA, emerging research additionally explores the value of deep characterization of tumor cfDNA genomics and fragmentomics as well as nucleosome modifications (chromatin structure), and methylation patterns (epigenomics) for comprehensive and multi-modal assessment of cfDNA. These tools have the potential to improve disease monitoring, increase the sensitivity of minimal residual disease identification, and detection of cancers at earlier stages. Recent progress in emerging technologies of cfDNA analysis is summarized, the added potential clinical value is highlighted, strengths and limitations are identified and compared with conventional targeted NGS analysis, and current challenges and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]