Molecularly Targeted Therapies in Solid Tumors

Dear Colleagues,

In the past century, the pharmacological treatment of most cancers was largely limited to cytotoxic chemotherapy. Although this is effective in some cancers, conventional chemotherapy is often limited by serious and sometimes life-threatening side effects. Thus, the ideal anticancer strategy would be one that selectively restricts the proliferation and survival of tumor cells while sparing normal cells. Molecular targeted therapies, which are tailored to interfere specifically with the key molecular aberrations that drive the malignant phenotype, are designed to meet this criterion at least partially, and they therefore hold great promise for expanding the therapeutic window.

Actually, the definition of signaling pathways to understand tumor biology, combined with the rapid development of technologies that allow high-throughput molecular analysis of tumors, has led to a new era of precision medicine in oncology, resulting in a highly productive drug discovery effort to develop oncology drugs targeted against oncogenic kinases. However, although the concept of oncogene addiction has led to some initially impressive clinical results, it is also apparent that tumors can often escape their oncogene-addicted state, causing relapse of the tumor even after pronounced initial responses. Thus, the main challenge in precision oncology includes both the identification of biomarkers that enable selection of patient populations that are most likely to benefit from the treatment and anticipation of the driven resistance molecular mechanisms.

This Special Issue will highlight the importance of molecular targeted therapies in oncological patient management, covering new basic and preclinical discoveries on the field of predictive biomarkers or resistance drivers to molecular targeted therapies response in solid tumors.

Dr. Olga Martinho
Guest Editor

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• molecular targeted therapies
• oncogene signaling pathways
• precision oncology
• predictive biomarkers
• therapy resistance
• solid tumors