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Clinical Features and Immunotherapeutic Strategies in Lung Cancer

A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 July 2026 | Viewed by 1151

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Pulmonary Medicine, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, Kyoto 602-8566, Japan
Interests: lung cancer; cancer cachexia; TTF-1; renal function; gut microbiota

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Optimizing immunotherapy for lung cancer requires robust and clinically actionable biomarkers to guide personalized treatment strategies and improve patient outcomes. This Special Issue will focus on the real-world application of biomarkers that facilitate precise patient stratification and enable dynamic monitoring of therapeutic responses.

We invite original research articles and comprehensive reviews that explore the clinical utility of diagnostic indicators for predicting immunotherapy efficacy and understanding mechanisms of treatment resistance. Topics of particular interest include liquid biopsy-based approaches to disease monitoring, identification of prognostic and predictive factors across lung cancer subtypes, and the influence of host-related systemic conditions—such as gut microbiota composition and cancer cachexia—on immunotherapy outcomes.

By emphasizing translational relevance and practical clinical insights, this Special Issue will provide clinicians and researchers with evidence-based data to refine treatment decision-making and advance precision immunotherapy for patients with lung cancer.

Dr. Naoya Nishioka
Guest Editor

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 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

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

  • lung cancer
  • immunotherapy
  • predictive biomarkers
  • liquid biopsy
  • therapeutic resistance

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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11 pages, 501 KB  
Perspective
The Landscape of Clinical Trials in Never-Smoker Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer: Registered Evidence and Persistent Gaps
by Raquel Ramos, Carlos Sousa and Nuno Vale
Cancers 2026, 18(4), 551; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers18040551 - 8 Feb 2026
Viewed by 960
Abstract
Lung cancer in never-smokers is increasingly recognized as a distinct clinical and biological entity, often enriched for actionable oncogenic alterations and characterized by molecular profiles that differ from tobacco-associated disease. However, therapeutic evidence for this growing patient population has frequently been extrapolated from [...] Read more.
Lung cancer in never-smokers is increasingly recognized as a distinct clinical and biological entity, often enriched for actionable oncogenic alterations and characterized by molecular profiles that differ from tobacco-associated disease. However, therapeutic evidence for this growing patient population has frequently been extrapolated from trials in which smokers predominate, potentially limiting treatment optimization and biomarker-driven decision-making. In this review, we map and critically appraise clinical trials registered in ClinicalTrials.gov that explicitly target never-smokers with lung cancer, focusing on therapeutic strategies, molecular stratification approaches, trial design features, and temporal trends. We discuss how eligibility definitions, histological and genomic enrichment, and endpoints have been handled across studies, and we highlight persistent gaps in dedicated trial activity, particularly in prospective biomarker-guided designs and contemporary platform strategies. Finally, we propose priorities for future trials to better reflect never-smoker lung cancer biology, improve external validity, and accelerate evidence generation for personalized therapeutic approaches in this population. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Clinical Features and Immunotherapeutic Strategies in Lung Cancer)
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