Many commonly used chemotherapy drugs, including the platin family molecules and various topoisomerase inhibitors, kill cancer cells by damaging their genomes. However, the severe toxicities and side effects of these drugs have a tremendous negative impact on the quality of life of cancer patients. To improve the efficacy and minimize the toxicity of oncology drugs, precision oncology and targeted cancer therapy exploring the Achilles’ Heel of cancer cells related to their genomic instability have emerged in recent decades, and are being actively pursued by many biotech companies and academic labs. In addition, genomic instability in a variety of cancers has also been explored as more accurate diagnostic biomarkers, for example for cancer immunotherapy or immuno-oncology.
The aim of this collection is to explore how genomic instability in a variety of cancers may be targeted for therapeutic intervention and as biomarkers for identifying the patient population that are most likely to respond to a particular therapeutic intervention, including conventional chemotherapy.
The collection is interested in articles that will shed new light on the mechanistic insights related to novel targeted therapy and biomarkers and welcomes original research and reviews, which include, but are not limited to, the following:
• The pros and cons of current approved oncology drugs, with specific focus on genomic instability of cancers, for example, the molecular mechanisms and drug resistance of PARP inhibitors in chemotherapy
• The emerging molecular targets related to genomic instability of cancers: such as, FANCM for the ALT cancers; WRN for the MSI cancers
• Novel biomarker targets related to genomic instability, for example, the BRCAness for platin and PARP inhibitors
• New approaches to explore genome instability features of cancers, and how this impacts patient response to current immuno-oncology approaches, including potential for future treatment guidance: for example, the impact of mutation loads and profiles of cancers.
Please note: studies consisting solely of bioinformatic investigation of publicly available genomic/transcriptomic/proteomic data do not fall within the scope of the section unless they are expanded and provide significant biological or mechanistic insight into the process being studied.
Many commonly used chemotherapy drugs, including the platin family molecules and various topoisomerase inhibitors, kill cancer cells by damaging their genomes. However, the severe toxicities and side effects of these drugs have a tremendous negative impact on the quality of life of cancer patients. To improve the efficacy and minimize the toxicity of oncology drugs, precision oncology and targeted cancer therapy exploring the Achilles’ Heel of cancer cells related to their genomic instability have emerged in recent decades, and are being actively pursued by many biotech companies and academic labs. In addition, genomic instability in a variety of cancers has also been explored as more accurate diagnostic biomarkers, for example for cancer immunotherapy or immuno-oncology.
The aim of this collection is to explore how genomic instability in a variety of cancers may be targeted for therapeutic intervention and as biomarkers for identifying the patient population that are most likely to respond to a particular therapeutic intervention, including conventional chemotherapy.
The collection is interested in articles that will shed new light on the mechanistic insights related to novel targeted therapy and biomarkers and welcomes original research and reviews, which include, but are not limited to, the following:
• The pros and cons of current approved oncology drugs, with specific focus on genomic instability of cancers, for example, the molecular mechanisms and drug resistance of PARP inhibitors in chemotherapy
• The emerging molecular targets related to genomic instability of cancers: such as, FANCM for the ALT cancers; WRN for the MSI cancers
• Novel biomarker targets related to genomic instability, for example, the BRCAness for platin and PARP inhibitors
• New approaches to explore genome instability features of cancers, and how this impacts patient response to current immuno-oncology approaches, including potential for future treatment guidance: for example, the impact of mutation loads and profiles of cancers.
Please note: studies consisting solely of bioinformatic investigation of publicly available genomic/transcriptomic/proteomic data do not fall within the scope of the section unless they are expanded and provide significant biological or mechanistic insight into the process being studied.
