Personalized Nursing Care for Patients with Cancer in the Precision-Medicine Era

Dear Colleagues,

The foundation of precision medicine lies in the recognition that different groups of individuals have specific genomic characteristics, which must be implicated in different and personalized treatments. The precision medicine era promises to offer, based on the identification of a patient’s genetic characteristics, the precise medicine, in the exact dose and at the right time, thus making it more efficient and reducing the costs of medical care. In order to meet the new demands for care, it is necessary that the omics sciences be integrated into nursing and clinical practice, especially in patient care. In this context, the emergent knowledge of structural genomics has been improved techniques that enabled the advancement of research related to functional genomics, which together comprise the “omics” sciences including transcriptomics, proteomics, the epigenomics and metabolomics. Such approaches aim to understand changes in the functioning of the genome at different stages of development and under different environmental conditions, in order to provide a better understanding of cancer development at a molecular level. It stands out that successful implementation of personalized nursing and clinical care in the precision medicine era requires interprofessional collaboration, community outreach efforts, and coordination of care. Recent approaches to personalized nursing care have shown a vast field of analysis to understand the connections between different systems (e.g., immune, endocrine, nervous system) and biobehavioral changes in patients in different contexts, particularly in the field of oncology. The integration of these complex connections of biological systems has become increasingly important and emergent for patient-centered oncology care.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Methodological studies concerning quantitative or qualitative approaches as well as experimental studies correlating the various clinical conditions or genotype information with phenotypes and clinical parameters of cancer patients.
• Innovative research in the field of diagnostic assessments and nursing interventions for personalized oncology nursing care.
• Studies focused on each individual’s personal risk for disease and the effectiveness of treatments based on individuals’ unique combination of genomics (or other omics science) and environmental risk factors.
• New analytical strategies for research involving personalized nursing and clinical care in oncology.
• Studies covering underlying mechanisms and priority cancer symptom clusters including: a) inflammation/immune system, b) sympathetic nervous system activation, c) hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activation; d) central nervous system changes; e) circadian rhythm disruption in order to determine the best approaches and methods to assess underlying genetic, epigenetic and biobehavioral mechanism, for cancer symptom clusters.
• The impact of diagnostic genomic tests on clinical decision making for cancer patients as well as ethical issues.
• Studies comprising cost–benefit assessment from an ethical perspective regarding the incorporation of new precision medicine technologies for patients with cancer.
• The findings should have implications for the improvement of personalized nursing and clinical care, oncology, nursing education, personalized cancer medicine, and nursing management, as well as contributing to the construction of education and health policies.

This Special Issue encourages papers: (1) reporting the evaluation of experiments, observational studies as well as randomized trials; (2) investigating physiology, genetics, genomics, pharmacogenetics/pharmacogenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics and epigenomics, mechanisms linking environment and health outcomes for cancer patients. Additionally, papers are invited addressing the three pillars of interdisciplinary and highly related knowledge: omics sciences, bioinformatics and biomarkers. Original articles, experimental studies, systematic reviews and metanalyses, scoping reviews, methodological studies, and short communications are welcome. Proposals for editorials or commentaries on the public health significance and future directions for these subjects would also be appreciated. We would like to encourage authors to submit robust research articles/communications or review papers.

Dr. Luís Carlos Lopes-Júnior
Dr. Luciana Chain Veronez
Guest Editors

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