Tumor Microenvironment in Primary Liver Cancer 2nd edition
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Tumor Microenvironment".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2025 | Viewed by 38
Special Issue Editors
Interests: hepatocellular carcinoma; cholangiocarcinoma; NK cells; tumor immunology; innate immunity; immunogenetics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: NK cells; liver cancer; tumor immunology; B cells; antibodies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This special issue of Cancers, entitled "Tumor Microenvironment in Primary Liver Cancer 2nd edition", provides an in-depth understanding of the pivotal role of all components of the tumor microenvironment (TME) involved in the complex interplay among cancer cells.
Liver cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA), remain a global health challenge, with increasing incidence worldwide. It is estimated that, by 2025, >1 million individuals will be affected by liver cancer annually.
The rapid development of multi-omics, single-cell technology, and spatial tissue analysis has helped researchers to elucidate the complexity of the TME while highlighting the strong heterogeneity of liver cancer, classifying it into major types.
In HCC, the TME consists of a combination of three major players, namely normal, fibrotic, and neoplastic areas, accompanied by distinct distribution patterns of tumorous, stromal, and immune cells, which are relevant to the clinical outcome of patients. An in-depth analysis of the immune TME revealed distinct subclasses of patients with differences in clinical prognosis and response to personalized treatment.
A desmoplastic stroma with a dense extracellular matrix, mainly enriched by cancer-associated fibroblasts, is the prominent feature of iCCA-TME, which plays an important role in the biology and aggressiveness of iCCA. Immune subtypes in the iCCA-TME, with different populations and gene expression profiles, as well as inflammatory and immune checkpoint pathways, hinder the effectiveness of targeted therapy and immunotherapy in a sizeable proportion of patients, further narrowing the already limited therapeutic opportunities.
For this Special Issue of Cancers, we invite authors to submit contributions that provide novel insights into the compositions and functions of diverse cell types and their metabolomes, secretomes, exosomes, and other soluble factors involved in cancer heterogeneity and tumor evolution, in particular findings that highlight promising translational applications.
Dr. Stefania Mantovani
Dr. Barbara Oliviero
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
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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
- liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma
- cholangiocarcinoma
- tumor immunology
- immune system
- tumor microenvironment
- NK cells
- cancer-associated fibroblast
- extracellular vesicles
- secretome
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