Oral cancer, predominantly oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), remains a significant global health burden with high morbidity and mortality. Despite advances in treatment strategies, survival rates have shown limited improvement, largely due to late diagnosis, tumor heterogeneity, and therapeutic resistance. Increasing evidence highlights the critical role of the immune system and tumor microenvironment in oral carcinogenesis, progression, and response to therapy. Interactions between tumor cells, immune infiltrates, cytokines, and stromal components shape disease behavior and influence clinical outcomes. Furthermore, the emergence of immunotherapeutic strategies, including immune checkpoint inhibitors, underscores the need to better understand immune dysregulation in oral cancer. A comprehensive exploration of oral cancer immunology is therefore essential to identify novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets.
This Research Topic aims to address critical gaps in understanding the immunological mechanisms underlying oral cancer development, progression, and therapeutic response. While immunotherapy has revolutionized cancer treatment, its efficacy in oral cancer remains variable and often limited to a subset of patients. This underscores the need to understand the complex interplay between tumor cells and the immune microenvironment, including immune evasion mechanisms and the role of immune suppression.
Recent advances in high-throughput technologies, single-cell sequencing, and spatial transcriptomics have provided unprecedented insights into tumor-immune interactions. Additionally, the identification of salivary and tissue-based immunological biomarkers offers promising avenues for early diagnosis and prognosis. Hence.integrating fundamental, translational, and clinical research to advance precision immunotherapy approaches in oral cancer is the need of the hour.
By bringing together interdisciplinary contributions, the aim is to foster a deeper understanding of immune pathways, identify predictive biomarkers, and explore innovative therapeutic strategies that can improve patient outcomes.
This Research Topic shall encourage submissions that explore the immunological landscape of oral cancer and related disorders, with an emphasis on translational relevance and clinical impact. Authors are encouraged to address, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• Immune cell dynamics in oral cancer
• Immune evasion mechanisms and checkpoint pathways
• Oral potentially malignant disorders and immune dysregulation
• Salivary and tissue biomarkers in immunodiagnostics
• Advances in immunotherapy (checkpoint inhibitors, CAR-T, vaccines)
• Genomic, proteomic, and single-cell approaches in tumor immunology
• Microbiome–immune interactions in oral cancer
Please note that manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this Research Topic.
Article types and fees
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
Brief Research Report
Case Report
Classification
Clinical Trial
Editorial
FAIR² Data
General Commentary
Hypothesis and Theory
Methods
Articles that are accepted for publication by our external editors following rigorous peer review incur a publishing fee charged to Authors, institutions, or funders.
Article types
This Research Topic accepts the following article types, unless otherwise specified in the Research Topic description:
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.
