Research on Targeted Drugs in Cancer
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Drug Development".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 July 2025 | Viewed by 7464
Special Issue Editors
Interests: anti-cancer drug; drug discovery
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Over the past two decades, the emergence of targeted therapies has transformed the therapeutic landscape for cancer treatment. Unlike conventional chemotherapies, which indiscriminately destroy both malignant and non-malignant cells, targeted therapies are designed to act specifically on cancer cells harboring particular mutations. This revolutionary precision medicine approach has resulted in effective tumor regression with reduced off-target toxicity relative to traditional chemotherapeutic agents. The early success of targeted therapies like the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (which dramatically improved survival rates for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia following its Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approval in 2001), combined with advances in genome sequencing technology, has led to a shift in the drug discovery process. With efforts turned toward the identification of druggable molecular alterations, the development of targeted drugs and biologics has flourished, rapidly encompassing the largest proportion of new oncology therapies approved by the FDA in the 21st century. The addition of these agents to the oncologist’s armamentarium has contributed to significant reductions in mortality for several cancers in recent years, including lung cancer and melanoma. Targeted therapies now feature prominently in oncology clinical practice guidelines, and next-generation sequencing to identify actionable mutations has become part of the standard-of-care practice for multiple cancers. Despite this extraordinary progress, resistance to targeted cancer therapies remains a challenge, and continued research to define strategies for preventing and overcoming resistance is warranted.
For this Special Issue of Cancers, we are interested in original research and review articles covering a broad range of topics related to targeted therapies, including (but not limited to) novel targets, clinical and regulatory aspects of development, and investigation into drug resistance mechanisms and management.
Dr. Marjorie E. Zettler
Dr. Bertal Aktas
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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