Single Cell and Spatial Biology in Immuno-Oncology

Dear Colleagues, 

Cancer cells usually begin when a single cell goes multiplying in an uncontrolled way and spreads spatially within the tumour and around the body. The ability to understand how transcriptional and genetic frameworks, and cellular regulatory networks function in normal and abnormal cells in a disease state is critical in understanding disease progression and treatment responses. The specific locations of cells or molecules within a highly organised biological system is crucial for pathophysiology, diagnosis, and management of patients with cancer.

Recent advancement in next-generation technologies, such as single-cell RNA sequencing, single-cell ATAC sequencing, CITE-seq, multiplexed fluorescence in situ hybridisation (FISH), MERFISH, Visium, CODEX immunofluorescence, STARmap, Slide-seq, and NanoString expression profiling, has provided unprecedented opportunities to understand how cells organise and regulate across the tissue landscape to drive disease progression and response to anti-cancer therapies. Single-cell analytics help in furthering the understanding of cancer development, progression, and microenvironment interactions. Data analyses at the single-cell level facilitate the development of new diagnostics markers or novel therapeutic targets for precision and personalised medicine.

The Genes journal focuses on the emergence of this field with a Special Issue on the topics related to single-cell and spatial analytics, tumour and immune microenvironment cell interactions, characterisation of tumour microenvironment cells, tumour microenvironment heterogeneity, tumour progression, immunotherapy resistance, acquired resistance in targeted therapies, single-cell phenotypic diagnostic markers, and novel therapeutic targets. The content of this Special Issue will be valuable to a broad audience working in different disciplinary backgrounds in immuno-oncology research. Multiple types of manuscript submission, including original research articles, reviews or mini-reviews, opinions, communications, and reports, will be sought for this Special Issue.

Dr. Camelia Quek
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 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. Genes is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly 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 2600 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.

• single-cell
• spatial analytics
• tumour and immune microenvironment cell interactions
• characterisation of tumour microenvironment cells
• tumour microenvironment heterogeneity
• tumour progression
• immunotherapy resistance
• acquired resistance in targeted therapies
• single-cell phenotypic diagnostic markers
• novel therapeutic targets