The Role of Peptides and Peptide Syntheses in Cancer Therapy

Dear Colleagues, 

Cancer is currently the second leading cause of death, and the number of cases is only predicted to grow, with 28.4 million new cases anticipated by 2040. Employing tumor-specific peptides is a very promising approach that can be used as a targeting, diagnostic or imaging tool. Hormone peptides—GnRH and somatostatin derivatives—are suitable for hormone therapy and can also be applied in cancer imaging as diagnostics. An increasing number isolated and synthetic peptides have demonstrated not only antimicrobial but also antitumor activity, providing potential new anticancer agents. Peptides can be used as homing moieties in peptide–drug conjugates (PDCs) to increase the selectivity of clinically applied and novel drugs to decrease side effects, and PDCs might have several advantages over antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs). Efficient homing peptides are suitable for specific targeting of nanocarriers or radiotracers to tumor tissues. To test the new constructs on tissue, organ and barrier mimicking models are also important to optimize new therapeutics before in vivo experiments.

Authors are invited to submit original research and review articles on application of peptides in tumor therapy, mainly on the following topics:    

• Peptides with antitumor activity and their interactions with the cell cycle and biological pathways;
• Identification of target proteins on the tumor cell surface and peptides that recognize them;
• Development of peptide-based conjugates for different types of tumors, including imagine and therapy; 
• Regulation of key tumor physiology processes, including migration, invasiveness, autophagy, and angiogenesis by peptides and peptide-based conjugates;
• Development of peptide–drug conjugates for stem-like cancer cells.

Prof. Dr. Gábor Mező
Dr. Szilvia Bősze
Guest Editors

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. International Journal of Molecular Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. There is an Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal. For details about the APC please see here. 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.