Targeting RNA to Improve Cancer Precision Medicine
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 September 2026 | Viewed by 708
Special Issue Editors
Interests: cancer; cell death pathways; miRNA; long non-coding RNA; cell signaling; apoptosis; autophagy; nanotechnology; drug delivery; chemotherapy; combination therapy; target-therapy; immunotherapy; biomarkers
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: cancer; non-coding RNA
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: cancer; RNA
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
RNA therapeutics are increasingly changing the standard of care for many diseases, including cancer, moving it toward personalized medicine.
RNA-based drugs have the potential to circumvent the problems that commonly affect traditional drugs acting as protein inhibitors, i.e., the lack of druggable active sites, the poor affinity and accessibility to the binding sites, and the large size of therapeutic antibodies/peptides, which results in low bioavailability and difficult cell membrane crossing.
On the other hand, therapeutic strategies based on nucleic acids are able to circumvent many of these limitations as they act at the DNA or RNA level, modulating gene expression through inhibition, addition, replacing, or editing, availing of the cellular translational machinery. Some critical points for DNA-based drugs are the permeation of two membranes to reach the nucleus and the safety concerns due to possible integration into the chromosomes. These drawbacks can be overcome by RNA therapeutics, which are introduced into the cytoplasm and do not pose a risk for the host genome.
The development of RNA drugs is rapidly evolving and encompasses different classes of therapeutics, such as antisense oligonucleotides, aptamers, siRNAs, miRNAs, and mRNA. The main advantages in the use of RNA-based drugs are represented by the simple and cost-effective production, the ability to act on “undruggable” targets, and the speed in obtaining specific constructs for customised treatments. Even this class of therapeutics still presents challenges to be addressed for successful employment in therapy, specifically the efficiency of delivery into the cytoplasm, the rapid degradation by RNases, and the possible triggering of undesirable immune system response.
The improvement and innovation of delivery strategies, mostly introducing chemical modifications on nucleic acid backbone and ribose ring, also coupled with the employment of advanced nanocarriers, represent the primary objectives of the current and future research of RNA-based drugs, which are going to find proficient application in oncology, revolutionising the gold standard for therapeutic interventions.
Dr. Gabriella Misso
Dr. Anna Grimaldi
Dr. Chiara Tammaro
Guest Editors
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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.
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
- cancer
- RNA therapy
- RNA delivery
- RNA
- miRNA
- mRNA
- siRNA
- oligonucleotides
- aptamers
- precision medicine
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