Stress Response Pathways in Cancer

A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Survivorship and Quality of Life".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 June 2025 | Viewed by 917

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
1. Cancer Registry of Crete, School of Medicine, University of Crete, 700 13 Heraklion, Greece
2. Department of Medical Oncology, University General Hospital of Heraklion, 715 00 Heraklion, Greece
Interests: environmental epidemiology; epidemiology; cancer epidemiology; public health; risk factors; environmental exposures; spatial statistics; geo-epidemiology; respiratory diseases; chronic diseases; COVID-19; prediction models; biostatistics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
1. Laboratory of Neuropsychology, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece
2. University of Crete Research Center for the Humanities, The Social and Educational Sciences (UCRC), University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece
3. Metropolitan College, Crete, Greece, in collaboration with University of East London, London, UK
Interests: cognitive training; working memory; prefrontal cortex; stress response

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Targeting the Integrated Stress Response (ISR) in cancer therapy and management is among the core components of cancer control, nowadays. Therefore, the study of Stress Response Pathways (SRP) is substantial and constitutes a very fertile area for extensive research. SRP could be defined as “cellular and organismal mechanisms to resist the effects of stress and/or restore homeostasis when conditions change”. Biological stressors come in many forms, such as thermal stress, oxidative stress, xenobiotic stress, proteotoxic stress, and osmotic stress. In the context of cancer biology, oncogene activation, such as MYC overexpression, can trigger the ISR, while cancer cells with enhanced proliferation have enhanced protein synthesis which leads to a high basal level of the ISR as compared to normal cells. This could potentially explain the link between ISR inducers and the selective targeting of cancer cells. Different stressors trigger different cellular responses, such as inducing cell repair mechanisms, inducing cell responses that result in temporary adaptation to some stressors, inducing autophagy, or triggering cell death. SRP seems to play an integral role both in cancer development and cancer therapy and survival.

The following research topics are of major interest: 1. stress and stress response; 2. Metabolic and oxidative stress in tumor cells; 3. Stress response components in cancer; 4. The role of stress response in tumor development and progression; 5. Interventions related to stress response in clinical and epidemiological studies.

The purpose of this Special Issue is to gather a collective group of studies to map the current evidence and trends on SRP and cancer. It aims to depict the dual role of SRP in cancer prevention and therapy and suggest integrative understanding as a basis for the development of future rational and holistic therapies targeting the stress response.

This Special Issue welcomes both original research articles and reviews (i.e., review scoping or systematic review, meta-analysis). Lastly, all types of epidemiological study design are welcomed, including cross-sectional studies, cohorts, clinical trials and interventions.

Dr. Dimitra Sifaki-Pistolla
Dr. Vasiliki Stavroulaki
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cancers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • stress response pathways
  • stress
  • stress expression
  • cancer
  • malignant neoplasms
  • cancer patients
  • mental health
  • cell repair mechanisms
  • cell responses
  • stressors
  • autophagy
  • trigger cell death

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Published Papers

This special issue is now open for submission.
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