Thoracic Neuroendocrine Tumors and the Role of Emerging Therapies
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 December 2025 | Viewed by 9326
Special Issue Editors
Interests: lung cancer; thoracic oncology; phase I clinical trials/experimental therapeutics
Interests: cancer epidemiology; cancer diagnosis; genomic profiling of cancer; emerging therapies in cancer, neuroendocrine neoplasm; melanoma
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Interests: neuroblastoma; ganglioneuroblastoma; pediatric neck mass; malignancy; neoplasm; pancreas; malignant neoplasm; biphasic; Carcinosarcoma; Pancreatic Ductal Carcinoma; seer; mesothelioma; peritoneal; hipec; radiation; Surgery; Parathyroid carcinoma; seer program; Cancer Staging; incidence; survival; mortality; gist; metastatic gists; MOLECULAR; sdh; dog1; spindle cell tumors; programmed death-ligand; immunosuppression; Autoimmunity; adenocarcinoma
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2. Biophysics Institute of Faculty of Medicine, Coimbra Institute for Clinical and Biomedical Research (iCBR) Area of Environment Genetics and Oncobiology (CIMAGO), University of Coimbra, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal
3. Center for Innovative Biomedicine and Biotechnology, University of Coimbra, 3000-548 Coimbra, Portugal
4. European Association for Professions in Biomedical Sciences, 1000 Brussels, Belgium
Interests: lung cancer; inflammation; radiation effects; immune oncology; biomarkers
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Thoracic Neuroendocrine Tumors (NETs) are classified into well-differentiated (low-grade typical carcinoids [TCs] and intermediate-grade atypical carcinoids [ACs]) and poorly differentiated (high-grade large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma LCNEC) or small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) neuroendocrine carcinoma. Despite the increasing incidence of thoracic NETS, awareness [1] and the development of personalized approach therapies in these patients lag.
Well-differentiated carcinoids, as atypical carcinoid tumors in the lung, can recur and become challenging. Unfortunately, the guidelines regarding adjuvant therapies remain unclear, and current regimens' survival benefit is questionable [2]. There is a critical need to update the classification, diagnosis, and treatment of lung NETs. The development of molecular markers to provide evidence supporting the treatment of this underserved type of NET is an area of unmet need.
Effective systemic therapies for patients with advanced, progressive neuroendocrine lung tumors are very rare. However, recently, everolimus was associated with significant improvement in progression-free survival in patients with progressive lung neuroendocrine tumors [3]. Further drug development is needed.
To date, there is only one biomarker-based clinical trial, S1929, in the poorly differentiated NETs; SCLC that has recently completed enrollment for screening, that attempts to stratify patients with SCLC to receive PARP inhibitor based on SLFN11 that is expressed by more than half of patients with SCLC. Further knowledge of predictive factors and novel therapies is needed.
References:
- Neuroendocrine Tumors of the Lung: Current Challenges and Advances in the Diagnosis and Management of Well-Differentiated Disease. Hendifar, Marchevsky, and Tuli. Journal of Thoracic Oncology Vol. 12 No. 3: 425–436.
- Survival Benefit of Adjuvant Chemotherapy in Pulmonary Carcinoid: A systematic Review. Philip Sobash and Nagla Abdel Karim. NCCN Virtual Annual Conference 2021 General Poster Session.
- Everolimus for the treatment of advanced, non-functional neuroendocrine tumours of the lung or gastrointestinal tract (RADIANT-4): a randomised, placebo-controlled, phase 3 study. Yao, Fazio, Singh et. al. The Lancet. Volume 387, Issue 10022, 5–11 March 2016, Pages 968–977.
Dr. Nagla Abdel Karim
Dr. Asad Ullah
Dr. Jaffar Khan
Prof. Dr. Fernando Mendes
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- thoracic neuroendocrine tumors
- lung NETs
- low-grade typical carcinoids
- TCs
- intermediate-grade atypical carcinoids
- ACs
- high-grade large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma LCNEC
- small cell lung carcinoma (SCLC) neuroendocrine carcinoma
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