Cancer Immunoediting and beyond 2.0

Dear Colleagues,

Human cancer is one of the most complex dynamic diseases. Despite rapid advances in the fields of molecular and cell biology, it is still widely debated as to how neoplastic cells progress through carcinogenesis and acquire their metastatic ability. Evidence has been accumulating since the middle of the last century, from animal models as well as from investigations in cancer patients, that the immune system can recognize and reject tumors. Tumor cells are constantly eliminated by the immune system, but some of them establish a long-term equilibrium phase leading to tumor “immunoediting” (i.e., the relationship between the tumor cells and the immune system, which mainly consists of three phases named elimination, equilibrium, and escape) and, eventually, “evasion”. It is known that during this dynamical process, tumor cells tend to acquire adjunctive mutations, leading to a greater number of new antigens with the potential to initiate an immune response. Although many tumors evoke an immune response, tumor clearance by the immune system does not occur due to a suppressive tumor microenvironment. Tumor immunology has, therefore, a growing need to comprehend the components of the immune system that are important for tumor immunosurveillance and tumor rejection to understand how, when, and why they fail in cases of clinical disease.

This Special Issue will contain a collection of manuscripts that describe investigations into the different stages of tumor “immunoediting”, covering a range of model systems and tumor types. The latest research articles and reviews that aim to clarify concepts, interpret experimental data, indicate specific experiments, and categorize a rich body of knowledge on the basis of the similarities and/or shared behaviors of very different tumors are welcome.

Prof. Dr. Fabio Grizzi
Prof. Dr. Elena Monica Borroni
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.