Recent Advances in Transplant Oncology

Dear Colleagues,

The concept of transplant oncology is a new vision to utilize the experience of transplantation medicine and oncology to treat selected malignancies with restricted therapeutic options to improve survival by extending the limit of conventional treatments. This concept has been mainly proposed in liver transplantation as hepatobiliary malignancies seem to largely benefit from this approach. The ideas are not new, as transplantation for liver cancers has been performed for decades with various outcomes, but only now have we been able to use the most recent advances in biomarker technology, including the circulating tumor DNA, precision medicine, and new targeted therapies. Three main entities are at the center of this “revolution”: hepatocellular carcinoma, intrahepatic biliary cancer, and liver-only metastasis of non-hepatobiliary carcinoma. The aggregate clinical experience has shown that many patients with these cancers achieve superior outcomes when treated with transplantation, as opposed to conventional resection and systemic therapy.

Due to organ shortage, many patients die while waiting for a liver transplant. Moreover, some livers are discarded as they are too injured to consider transplanting. As a result, there is a significant disparity between the available organs and the demand. This is the main obstacle to the use of transplantation for a large multitude of these oncological patients. Under the concept of transplant oncology, we have modified patient selection criteria to guarantee the best possible outcomes without negatively impacting non-cancer patients on the waitlist. Validated tools to predict treatment response, recurrence, and survival are now more relevant, and the interactions between immunosuppressive protocols and new immunotherapy are also investigated.

Given the increasing interest in this topic and the emergent experience in different groups, there is a clear need to channel information about the approach, patient selection criteria, oncological treatments, and surgical techniques supported by local, regional, or international outcomes. We are pleased to invite you to contribute to this Special Issue, titled “Recent Advances in Transplant Oncology”, hosted by Current Oncology, to bring the concept and experience of transplant oncology to this journal's wide community of readers. In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. We are seeking submissions that will bring a better understanding of the implementation of transplant oncology algorithms at different centers and how the novel concepts of precision medicine are used. We also seek analyses of transplant policy in light of this new concept and the use of life donation for this purpose. Finally, we hope to provide more clarity on the specific management and mechanisms of these three cancers to improve oncological outcomes.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Boris Luis Gala-López
Dr. Blaire Anderson
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• transplant oncology
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• cholangiocarcinoma
• liver metastasis
• colorectal cancer
• neuroendocrine tumors
• patient selection
• waitlist mortality
• precision medicine
• organ allocation