Contribution of Neural Stemness and Its Regulatory Networks to Tumorigenesis
A special issue of Biomedicines (ISSN 2227-9059). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Biology and Oncology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2026 | Viewed by 39
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Cancer is a complex disease due to its genetic/phenotypic heterogeneities and the interactions between different components within the tumor microenvironment. Because these complexities increase with the progression of tumorigenesis, understanding cancer cells remains a significant challenge. In recent years, it has been revealed that (1) cancer (tumorigenic) cells share regulatory networks and cellular properties with embryonic neural/neural stem cells; (2) the main characteristic of cancer (tumorigenic) cells is neural stemness, which represents general stemness and confers tumorigenicity and pluripotency to cancer cells; (3) tumorigenesis represents the progressive loss of original cell identity and increases in neural stemness; and (4) neural induction promotes body axis formation during embryogenesis (and ectopic neural induction causes a conjoined twin), whereas a neural induction-like process promotes tumorigenesis in postnatal animals/humans. These conceptual paradigms pave novel paths for understanding cancer as a systemic disease, in which cancer is a chaotic conjoined twin-like structure formed in postnatal animals/humans that is promoted by the aberrant occurrence of neural stemness in cells. Studies using single-cell analyses have also generated valuable information supporting these paradigms.
This Special Issue aims to compile experimental studies and reviews that address the contribution of the intrinsic neural properties or neural factors of cancer cells to the initiation and progression of cancer. This includes the promotion of cancer cell traits such as therapy resistance; immune evasion; the contribution of neural stemness to the phenotypic heterogeneity of tumors; and studies addressing the potential value of targeting neural stemness in cancer therapy. Please note that this Special Issue will not investigate the crosstalk between the host nerve/neural factor and tumor during tumorigenesis.
Prof. Dr. Ying Cao
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- neural stemness
- tumorigenicity
- pluripotency
- phenotypic heterogeneity
- cancer cell
- cancer cell-intrinsic neural factors
- differentiation therapy via targeting neural stemness
- tumorigenesis
- therapy resistance
- immune evasion
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