Immune Microenvironment in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Scrutinizing the Soldiers and the Weapons in the Tumor Milieu

Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to invite you to contribute to the upcoming Special Issue of the journal Cancers entitled “Immune Microenvironment in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma: Scrutinizing the Soldiers and the Weapons in the Tumor Milieu”. The aim of this Special Issue is to provide an overview of current knowledge on the crucial mechanisms that promote tumor niche interactions and mediate immunosuppression during pancreatic cancer development and progression.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a malignancy of pancreatic cells, with a poor survival rate, when diagnosed in its advanced stage. Despite recent therapeutic advancements, disease progression remains mostly inevitable, and the disease is fatal in the majority of patients.

According to international guidelines, regional lymph nodes (LN) are not considered a surgery contraindication for the treatment of resectable PDAC. Nevertheless, the presence of LN metastases, as well as the number of positive LNs, strongly impact the PDAC outcome. Recently, the International Association of Pancreatology proposed to include the suspicion of regional LN metastases in the criteria that define borderline resectable PDAC. This frame of thinking affects a further selection of patients eligible for up-front surgery with the aim to reduce surgical morbidity and mortality in poor-prognosis patients. The scientific community is, in fact, now involved in identifying novel pathophysiologic drivers of tumor-invasiveness and prognostic factors for patient management and clinical decision-making. Recent developments in molecular profiling of PDAC have helped in achieving a better stratification of different clinical phenotypes, highlighting the possible role of genetic signatures in the LN metastatic process. Lymphatic dissemination depends on the interaction among cancer cells, the tumor immune microenvironment and the premetastatic niche. However, to date, no gene signature has been dissected in order to find a lymphatic-related metastasis driver in PDAC.

Thus, a major challenge in the treatment of patients with PDAC is the timely identification of treatment options in a personalized manner. Current approaches in precision oncology aim to match specific DNA mutations to drugs, but the incorporation of genome-wide RNA, DNA, epigenetics and proteomics profiles has not yet been clinically assessed.

All manuscripts will be peer-reviewed according to standard journal procedures and policies.

We hope that you will be able to accept this invitation and contribute to the success of this Special Issue. I look forward to collaborating with you.

Dr. Antonella Argentiero
Dr. Antonio G. Solimando
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.

• pancreatic cancer
• pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)
• immune microenvironment
• tumor-invasiveness and prognostic factors
• precision oncology
• epigenetics
• proteomics