Radiotherapy and New Biological Paradigms in Cancer Treatments (2nd Edition)
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 May 2025) | Viewed by 2554
Special Issue Editor
Interests: combination of immune checkpoint inhibitors and radiotherapy; radiation oncology and immunity; radiation oncology; immunotherapy; inflammation
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
This collection is the second edition of "Radiotherapy and New Biological Paradigms in Cancer Treatments" (Radiotherapy is an important modality used in the treatment of more than 50% of cancer patients. However, despite sophisticated techniques for radiation delivery, as well as the combination of radiation with chemotherapy, tumors can recur.
In a cancer cell-centric view, radiotherapy is used against tumors because it determines cell injury and, thus, cell death. The central dogma of traditional radiobiology states that the cytotoxic effects of radiation on tumor cells are primarily due to the production of DNA double-strand breaks followed by some form of cell death, including apoptosis, necrosis, autophagy, mitotic catastrophe, or replicative senescence. In accordance, DNA damage and subsequent tumor cell death have been ascribed to four basic principles (known as the 4 “Rs” of radiobiology), i.e., reassortment of tumor cells into radiosensitive phases of the cell cycle (G2/M), reoxygenation of hypoxic areas within a tumor, repair of sublethal DNA damage, and repopulation of surviving tumor cells, whereby the manipulation of each factor alters tumor cell radiosensitivity.
Against this background, there is an abscopal effect (defined as “an action at a distance from the irradiated volume but within the same organism”) that it is not explainable within the aforementioned traditional radiotherapy view.
Nowadays, there is more information about cancer and, above all, the interaction between the tumor and the host is considered essential on all sides. Tumor cells must interact with the host microenvironment and avoid immune destruction.
However, in most patients, radiation therapy can convert the tumor into an “in situ vaccine” able to induce a de novo anticancer immune response. The radiation-induced cell death is followed by the release of tumor antigens together with pro-inflammatory signals. First, it was demonstrated that cell death is an efficient process to transfer antigens from tumor cells to dendritic cells, which, in turn, are required to activate tumor-specific T cells. Moreover, in recent years, a functional redefinition of cell death, based on its effects on immune cells (i.e., tolerance or activation), has emerged as the “immunogenic cell death”.
This Special Issue will highlight the current state of the art in the immunostimulatory activity of radiotherapy, its role in tumor microenvironment, and its new paradigm of action.
Dr. Francesco Fiorica
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 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
- radiobiology
- immunity
- immunogenic cell death
- cancer therapy
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