Regulatory Factors and Signaling Pathways of Anti-Tumor Immune Responses

Dear Colleagues, 

Regulatory factors and signaling pathways play a crucial role in shaping anti-tumor immune responses, a field of study central to cancer immunotherapy. While treatments like immune checkpoint blockade, vaccines, and T-cell transfer therapy have shown significant promise, their clinical success remains limited to specific cancer types and a minority of patients. This is largely due to the complex interplay of factors within the tumor microenvironment (TME) that can suppress the immune system’s ability to fight cancer. The TME contains a variety of regulatory factors and signaling molecules that can either promote or inhibit immune cell function. A deeper understanding of these intricate pathways is essential for overcoming therapeutic resistance and broadening the applicability of current immunotherapies. Consequently, current research focuses on identifying novel druggable targets and developing combination treatments to modulate these regulatory factors and enhance the body’s anti-tumor immunity. 

For this Special Issue, we invite you to contribute original research articles, reviews, or perspective articles on all aspects under the umbrella of “Regulatory Factors and Signaling Pathways of Anti-Tumor Immune Responses”. Relevant topics include, but are not limited to, the following: 

• Anti-tumor immunity;
• Immunotherapy;
• Immune checkpoint blockade;
• Immune receptor and ligand;
• Immune evasion;
• Tumor immune microenvironment;
• Inflammation;
• T-cell activation and inhibition;
• Myeloid-derived suppressor cell;
• Macrophage;
• Dendritic cell.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Geeta Upadhyay
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 short 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. Cells 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 2700 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.