Special Issue "Cell Death and Cancer"

Guest Editor
Prof. Dr. Afshin Samali
Head of Biochemistry, School of Natural Sciences, National University of Ireland - Galway, University Road, Galway, Ireland
Website: http://www.nuigalway.ie/biochemistry/staff/samali/index.html
E-Mail:
Interests: apoptosis; cell death; autophagy; TRAIL; heat shock proteins; Endoplasmic Reticulum stress; hypoxia

Dear Colleagues

Cell death is involved in a variety of biological processes including morphogenesis, maintaining tissue homeostasis and elimination of harmful cells. Deregulation of proliferation, together with a reduction in cell death, is both necessary and sufficient for tumor development, progression, and resistance to therapy. The mechanisms of cell death and cell survival are complex and involve not only apoptosis and necrosis, but also their cross-talk with other programmed intracellular processes such as autophagy. In addition, the tumor microenvironment has a great impact on cell death, cell signaling, tumor metabolism, cell survival, and therapeutic responsiveness. The central focus of the special issue on “Cell Death and Cancer” is cell death regulation and how to exploit it for therapeutic gain. The main topics will include, but are not limited to, the role of cell death (e.g., apoptosis and necrosis) and cell survival pathways (e.g., autophagy) in tumorigenesis; targeting autophagy and cell death pathways for tumor eradication; death receptor and mitochondria-mediated apoptosis; stress-activated and survival-related protein kinases (e.g., p38, JNK, AKT, etc.) and their role in cell death; novel strategies to target anti-apoptotic proteins (SMAC mimetics, BH3 mimetics etc.).

Thank you for your collaboration.

Prof. Dr. Afshin Samali
Guest Editor

Submission Information

All manuscripts should be submitted to cancers@mdpi.org with a copy to the Guest Editor. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Cancers is an international peer-reviewed Open Access monthly journal published by MDPI.

For the first two issues, to be published in 2009 and 2010, the Article Processing Charges (APC) will be waived for well-prepared manuscripts. English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.

• apoptosis
• autophagy
• Bcl-2 family
• caspases
• cell death
• cell survival
• death receptors
• mitochondria
• oncogenes
• tumor suppressor genes