Cancer Drug Resistance: Mechanisms and Overcoming Strategies
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Clinical Research of Cancer".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 26
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Over the past few decades, cancer treatment has advanced dramatically with the adoption of next-generation sequencing into clinical practice, refined targeted therapies for mutation-specific diseases, and the use of immunotherapies to harness the power of the patient’s own immune system. These innovations have delivered meaningful gains in patient survival across many cancer types. Yet, drug resistance remains one of the greatest barriers to durable outcomes. Some patients demonstrate no clinical benefit to therapy (intrinsic resistance), whereas others relapse as tumors adapt and evolve in the face of therapy (acquired resistance). Importantly, no treatment modality is impervious to resistance—from chemotherapy to targeted agents to immunotherapy, and even combinations of these—making it a critical frontier to continually explore in oncology research.
This Special Issue will bring together the latest advances aimed at tackling critical components of cancer drug resistance. We welcome original research that uncovers mechanisms of intrinsic or acquired resistance to emerging targeted therapies such as KRAS inhibitors or immunotherapies like antibody–drug conjugates, as well as studies proposing novel combinatorial strategies. Submissions leveraging artificial intelligence to identify patient subgroups at risk of resistance to certain therapeutics are also encouraged, as are review articles discussing recent progress in the field. Collectively, this issue aims to reveal emerging methods to anticipate, prevent, and overcome therapy resistance, highlighting ongoing challenges and innovative opportunities to combat drug resistance and improve patient outcomes.
Dr. Jessica M. Konen
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (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 thoroughly refereed through a single-blind 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 semimonthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Keywords
- intrinsic resistance
- acquired resistance
- targeted therapy resistance
- combination treatment strategies
- immunotherapy resistance
- tumor heterogeneity
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