Molecular Signatures of Therapy: Biomarkers Predicting Response and Relapse in Cancer

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce this Special Issue of Cancers, dedicated to advancing our understanding of how molecular biomarkers can anticipate therapeutic outcomes and forewarn disease relapse. Precision oncology increasingly depends on refined biomarkers that not only stratify patients before treatment, but also monitor residual disease, early recurrence, and evolving resistance.

This Special Issue invites original research articles and reviews that focus on:

• Predictive biomarkers: molecular signatures (genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, epigenetic) that indicate the likelihood of response to targeted therapies, immunotherapies, or conventional modalities.
• Therapy-induced dynamics: changes in biomarker profiles during treatment (for example, via liquid biopsy, circulating tumour DNA, exosomes, immune signatures) that reflect early response, emerging resistance, or minimal residual disease.
• Mechanisms of relapse: molecular and cellular drivers of disease recurrence, including persistence of residual clones, tumour evolution under treatment pressure, microenvironmental adaptations, and immune escape.
• Strategies for relapse-prediction and monitoring: assays and models for timely detection of recurrence (biomarker-based surveillance, imaging-biomarker integration, multi-omics longitudinal profiling) and their translation into clinical protocols.
• Translational and clinical implementation: biomarker-guided clinical trials, companion diagnostics, integration of biomarkers into therapeutic decision-making and relapse prevention frameworks, and real-world evidence supporting biomarker utility.

We welcome contributions across all cancer types and therapeutic modalities and particularly encourage multi-disciplinary studies that bridge molecular discovery with clinical application. All submitted manuscripts will undergo rigorous peer review to ensure the highest scientific quality and relevance to the field.

Join us in building a timely and impactful collection that brings together biomarker science with actionable clinical insight—helping to bring the next generation of precision therapy and relapse-prevention strategies into practice.

Dr. Antonis Giakountis
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 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-anonymized 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.