The Role of Opioid Therapy for Cancers
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 July 2026 | Viewed by 14
Special Issue Editors
Interests: supportive care
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Almost 40 years ago, the World Health Organization first proposed the WHO analgesic ladder to improve and provide adequate pain relief for cancer patients. The ladder was part of a wider programme called the WHO Caner Pain and Palliative Care Program, which included education programmes and strategies to improve management and support for people with cancer-related pain. The mainstay of the therapies described in the original ladder and its subsequent versions promoted the use of opioids as the gold standard treatment for cancer pain.
Opioids continue to form the basis of cancer pain management and, for the majority, they continue to be a highly effective therapy. However, there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to opioid use in cancer pain management and some cancer patients will experience poor control of pain despite appropriate dosing, whilst others will experience intolerable opioid-related adverse effects despite attempts at their pre-emptive management. The same opioid dose given by the same route of administration may result in vastly contrasting analgesia and adverse effects in different patients. The predictors of effectiveness and of the severity of adverse effects experienced by individual patients remain unclear, leading to a trial-and-error approach in everyday clinical practice to those starting or being maintained on opioid therapy.
There remain many unanswered questions regarding the optimisation of opioid therapy in cancer, both in the pre-clinical and clinical domains. What role do inter-individual differences in drug metabolising enzymes such as cytochrome P450 play in this variability in response? What is the role of genetics in affecting analgesic response clinically? Do neuromodulatory cytokines and catecholamines such as dopamine have an effect on the efficacy of opioid therapy? Do biassed opioids have a role in reducing tolerance? Does opioid rotation definitely lead to improved analgesia and what are the mechanisms by which this practice works? Are different opioids any more or less effective than any others in achieving optimal analgesia? Are clinician and patient anxieties around opioid used disorder warranted? Should opioid therapy be re-examined in placebo-controlled clinical trials?
This Special Issue will highlight the role of opioid therapy in cancer, exploring the current state of the art in pre-clinical and clinical research, and seeks to yield future avenues towards improving care for cancer patients.
Prof. Brian Le
Guest Editor
Dr. Aaron K. Wong
Guest Editor Assistant
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
- opioids
- palliative care
- chronic cancer pain
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