New Molecular Insights for GC Characterization and Treatment
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Cancer Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 25814
Special Issue Editor
Interests: molecular features of gastric cancer; deregulation of signal transduction in cancer cells; molecular mechanisms of chemoresistance; IRES-mediated transcription modulation
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Gastric cancer is the fifth most frequently diagnosed cancer and the third leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Surgical resection, possibly combined with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, is the elective approach. The high lethality rate is due to late diagnosis and lack of effective treatments. When the tumor is in an advanced stage, or in the presence of cancer relapse or metastases, multi-line chemotherapy strategy according to standard guidelines is the only option. However, the effects on the overall survival are modest, and the most common phenomenon responsible for the treatment failure is innate or acquired resistance to chemotherapy agents. Traditional subdivision based on epidemiological, macroscopical, and histological classifications, is ineffective to understand the complex gastric cancer biology and to determine patient prognosis. Thanks to the advances in the diagnostic tools and to the next-generation sequencing technology, we may currently approach cancers from a molecular point of view, to stratify patients for targeted diagnosis and therapy. Anyway, inter-individual variability of drug response together with tumor heterogeneity are particularly hard to overcome when treating gastric cancer.
Even if alterations in multiple single genes and complex copy number and gene expression profiles have been identified, their significance in gastric carcinogenesis, tumor progression, and patient survival remains to be determined. So far, only CDH1 mutation is indicated as a preventive marker to monitor patients with hereditary GC, and HER2 overexpression as a predictive marker for response to trastuzumab treatment.
Furthermore, differences in development and response to treatments have been observed among ethnically diverse populations. In spite of major incidence, GC Asian patients have a better prognosis and response to treatments than Caucasian ones. Studies on the molecular mechanisms underlying gastric cancer are limited by the lack of in vitro experimental models, such as cell cultures, especially from Caucasian subjects. Most of the studies on GC have been conducted on Asian patients; however, it remains questionable whether they can be fully extrapolated to Caucasian populations, as assessed, i.e., by difference in the somatic mutation rates of several driver genes.
This Special Issue seeks reviews and original papers covering the more recent studies related to gastric cancer biology, molecular biology, models for preclinical studies, identification of molecular markers suitable for diagnosis, and markers to target patients for personalized treatment strategies.
Dr. Lucia Magnelli
Guest Editor
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
- gastric cancer
- chemoresistance
- preclinical experimental models
- gene therapy
- precision medicine
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