Turning Cold Tumors Hot: Insights Into Molecular Mechanisms and Clinical Applications of Immunogenic Cell Death

Despite the great advances in cancer therapy and the benefit gained with the introduction of immunotherapy, cancer treatment is still challenging. The evasion mechanisms engaged by tumor cells and the occurrence of heavy side effects render anti-cancer therapies effective for a limited portion of patients. Much effort is being spent in clinical cancer research to understand the heterogeneity within the tumor microenvironment (TME) for boosting anti-cancer immune responses and immunotherapy efficacy in non-responsive tumors, the so-called “cold” tumors. In this context, the ability to elicit specific programs of cancer cell deaths that are able to trigger anti-tumor immunogenic responses [referred as Immunogenic Cell Death (ICD)], has been attributed to many conventional and targeted anti-cancer treatments, and accumulating evidence suggests that treatment-induced ICD could represent a promising strategy to reshape the “cold” TME into “hot”, boost the efficacy of anti-cancer treatments (and in particular of immunotherapy), and ameliorate patients’ outcome.

ICD is rapidly drawing much attention from the scientific community in the field of cancer therapy. In this Research topic, we would like to shed light on ICD going insights into the molecular mechanisms characterizing its various forms, and the potential clinical applications it may be implied with. The clinical relevance of ICD and cancer treatment is very promising. Some conventional treatments have already demonstrated their ability to induce some forms of ICD, and currently, new ICD inducers are under screening. Gaining more information on ICD mechanisms and new possible ICD inducers could be of fundamental importance in the clinic as it may lead to the identification and development of new effective anti-cancer agents.

The Research topic welcomes all types of work that have the potential to unravel novel aspects of ICD, from the mechanistic point of view to the clinical translatability. Potential contributions may address one of the following topics:
• Identification of novel ICD inducers
• Molecular mechanisms and targets of ICD
• Establishment of new methods for ICD detection
• Clinical application of ICD
• New insight on DAMPs
• Factors inhibiting DAMPs

We accept different article types including Mini-Reviews, Brief Research Reports and Perspectives. A full list of accepted article types, including descriptions, can be found at this link.

Keywords: Immunogenic Cell Death (ICD), Damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs), Tumor immunophenotype, Tumor microenvironment (TME), Anti-tumor Immune responses, Tumor neoantigens, Cancer immunogenicity

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.