Targeted Therapy in Gastrointestinal Cancer

Dear Colleagues,

Gastrointestinal (GI) cancer is a major cause of cancer-related mortality and appears to be a great challenge for cancer treatment. The most common types of GI cancer are colorectal, gastric, esophageal, pancreatic, and liver cancers. General treatments, including surgical techniques, chemoradiotherapies, and immunotherapies, have been developed expeditiously, but the overall 5-year survival rate of GI cancer patients in advanced-stage disease is still less than 15% due to rapid disease progression, metastasis, and treatment resistance. Targeted therapy involves using drugs that target specific oncogenes involved in the growth and spread of cancer cells. Several monoclonal antibodies and small molecule inhibitors (especially tyrosine kinase inhibitors) have been approved for clinical usage. However, one of the critical puzzles is the heterogeneity between individuals, which requires personalized therapies to achieve better treatment outcomes. Thus, it is imperative to improve the prognosis of GI cancer patients by delineating the molecular mechanisms of tumor progression and developing novel targeted therapies.

This Special Issue aims to allow authors from different research areas (such as tumor biology, immunology, microbiology, drug design and development, pharmacology, and bioinformatics) to focus on targeted therapy in GI cancer treatment, describe the discoveries of their research, and deliver novel insights. Original research articles and reviews are welcome for this Special Issue. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following: the molecular mechanisms of GI cancers, targeted therapy development, the identification of promising oncogenic targets, the role of the microbiome in tumor microenvironment remodeling,  and the prognosis of GI cancers.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Wei Kang
Prof. Dr. Ka Fai To
Guest Editors

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