About this Research Topic
Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The discovery of several driver gene alterations including EGFR, ALK, ROS1, BRAF, HER2, RET, MET, and the development of their small molecular tyrosine kinase inhibitors in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), one of the most common histological type of lung cancer, have revolutionised the treatment landscape and resulted in significant prolongation of progression-free survival and/or overall survival. Although novel and new generation of molecular targeted agents emerge endlessly, drug resistance is inevitable and would narrow the long term survival benefit. In addition, immunotherapy on the basis of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) targeting cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen-4 (CTLA-4), or programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) and its ligand (PD-L1), has also significantly improved the prognosis and shifted the treatment paradigm in patients with NSCLC or small cell lung cancer (SCLC). Unfortunately, there is still an unmet clinical need for the majority of patients who do not respond to ICIs. What’s worse, drug resistance is also inevitable for immunotherapy and current knowledge on this area is limited.
Drug resistance in molecular targeted therapy, and predictive biomarker and drug resistance in immunotherapy will remain the hotspot for lung cancer in the years to come. This Research Topic aims at publishing high-quality Original Research, Review, Perspective and Opinion articles and unique Case Reports on genomic/epigenomic aspects of multi-dimensional biomarkers and resistance mechanism of targeted therapy and immunotherapy in lung cancer.
Potential topics of interest include but are not limited to:
- Novel primary and/or acquired drug resistance mechanism of molecular targeted therapies (including EGFR, ALK, ROS1, BRAF, HER2, RET and MET tyrosine kinase inhibitors and novel antibody-drug conjugate, bispecific antibodies) in lung cancer
- Novel primary and/or acquired resistance mechanism of immunotherapy (including PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies, novel immune checkpoint inhibitors and bispecific antibodies) in lung cancer
- Multi-omics (including genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, etc.) data on the tumor immune microenvironment that may translate to the development of predictive and/or prognostic biomarkers to immunotherapy in lung cancer
- Elucidate the specific features of tumor immune microenvironment of lung cancers with distinct driver gene alterations including EGFR, ALK, ROS1, BRAF, HER2, RET, MET.
- Explore the mechanistic basis for immunotherapy combinational therapy that could help to optimize the future clinical development and application
Keywords: Lung cancer, targeted therapy, immunotherapy, biomarker, resistance mechanism
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