Anti-hypoxia and Oxygenation Agents for Cancer Immunotherapy

Dear Colleagues,

Oxygenation agents and blood substitutes attracted significant attention in the field of biotechnology due to military applications, the AIDS epidemic and threats to blood supply, organ preservation, stroke, cardiac surgery, etc. Recent strategies using immune checkpoint inhibitors to block immunological negative regulators have highlighted the need for further advancements in cancer immunotherapies through the blockade of biochemical barriers. Previous demonstrations of the immunological effects of anti-hypoxic supplemental oxygenation revealed the acute medical need for oxygen-diffusing blood substitutes and the repurposing of oxygenation agents to target tumor hypoxia and enable more effective cancer immunotherapies. While the proof of principle for such an approach was provided by studies focusing on using respiratory hyperoxia to reverse tumor hypoxia and promote anti-tumor responses, recent strategies have employed hypoxia-targeting prodrugs, perfluorocarbons, injectable oxygen microparticles and other novel methods to improve cancer immunotherapy. In this Special Issue, we discuss the history and development of these classes of drugs and consider their future as potent adjuvants in immunotherapy for cancer.

Since the International Journal of Molecular Sciences is a journal of molecular science, pure clinical studies will not be considered for this Special Issue. However, clinical submissions with biomolecular experiments are welcomed.

Dr. Stephen M. Hatfield
Prof. Dr. Bruce D. Spiess
Guest Editors

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• oxygenation agents
• blood substitutes
• immune checkpoint inhibitors
• cancer immunotherapies
• target tumor hypoxia
• hypoxia-targeting prodrugs
• perfluorocarbons
• injectable oxygen microparticles