About this Research Topic
The concept of differentiation therapy of cancer is now almost 50 years old. The first observation regarding the prospect of using all-trans retinoic acid to block cell proliferation and induce cell differentiation was for teratoma cells and published in 1978. Since that time, the most successful example of differentiation therapy has been the use of all-trans retinoic acid to treat acute promyelocytic leukaemia. This transformed the most fatal subtype of acute myeloid leukaemia to the most curable one. There are no other spectacular examples of differentiation therapy, but there is some progress in this field. For cancer cells, the key issue is that to drive their terminal differentiation requires the transcription of genes that are inhibited by cancer-related mutations. There are many new drugs that are transcription regulators, and there are also some old drugs for which an influence on transcription regulation is now known.
The goal of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of the current status of differentiation therapy of cancer, and to propose new ideas and new drugs that could serve this purpose. Mechanistic aspects of the differentiation therapies should be considered. The advantages and disadvantages of differentiation therapies against cytotoxic therapies should be discussed. There is also a room to propose which cancers might be cured by using differentiation therapies, and whether known drugs could be identified that could be repurposed as differentiation therapeutics for some cancers.
We would like to encourage researchers to contribute to this Research Topic to describe the current status and propose new pathways to the development of differentiation therapies for cancer. Our Research Topic welcomes submissions of Original Research Articles, Hypotheses, Perspectives, Reviews, and Commentaries focused on the following topics, but not limited to:
• Differentiation inducing agents: current and prospective
• Current treatments for acute promyelocytic leukemia
• Differentiation therapies for other subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia
• Differentiation therapies for solid cancers
• Selective activators of transcription
The goal of this Research Topic is to provide an overview of the current status of differentiation therapy of cancer, and to propose new ideas and new drugs that could serve this purpose. Mechanistic aspects of the differentiation therapies should be considered. The advantages and disadvantages of differentiation therapies against cytotoxic therapies should be discussed. There is also a room to propose which cancers might be cured by using differentiation therapies, and whether known drugs could be identified that could be repurposed as differentiation therapeutics for some cancers.
We would like to encourage researchers to contribute to this Research Topic to describe the current status and propose new pathways to the development of differentiation therapies for cancer. Our Research Topic welcomes submissions of Original Research Articles, Hypotheses, Perspectives, Reviews, and Commentaries focused on the following topics, but not limited to:
• Differentiation inducing agents: current and prospective
• Current treatments for acute promyelocytic leukemia
• Differentiation therapies for other subtypes of acute myeloid leukemia
• Differentiation therapies for solid cancers
• Selective activators of transcription
Keywords: differentiation therapy, cancer, neoplasms
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
