Innovative Strategies in Cancer Therapy
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Oncology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 December 2025 | Viewed by 13
Special Issue Editors
Interests: infectious disease; malaria; virus; cancer; medicinal chemistry; natural compounds
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: organic synthesis; organic material science; photonic materials; drug delivery; supramolecular chemistry
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Immunotherapy has emerged as a transformative modality in cancer treatment, harnessing the body's immune system to selectively target and eliminate tumor cells. However, the development of current immunotherapeutic agents still grapples with challenges such as high systemic toxicity, inadequate target specificity, and limited bioavailability, issues that must be addressed at the molecular design level.
Medicinal chemistry plays a pivotal role in overcoming these limitations. The rational design and chemical optimization of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), bi-specific T-cell engagers (BiTEs), and chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) constructs are crucial to enhancing their pharmacodynamic and pharmacokinetic profiles. For example, small-molecule ICIs offer a tunable alternative to antibody-based therapies, where modifications to molecular scaffolds and substituent groups can dramatically improve receptor selectivity and metabolic stability. Similarly, engineering the linker chemistry in BiTEs can modulate their half-life, binding affinities, and immune synapse formation.
Recent medicinal chemistry efforts have also focused on hybrid molecules that combine immune-stimulatory motifs with tumor-targeting ligands, creating multifunctional constructs capable of localized immune activation. Structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies and molecular modeling have been instrumental in identifying key functional groups responsible for efficacy and minimizing off-target effects. Additionally, chemical modifications aimed at improving the solubility, permeability, and intracellular delivery of immunotherapeutic agents are increasingly being integrated into early-stage drug discovery pipelines.
The strategic combination of ICIs, BiTEs, and CAR-T therapies offers an exciting frontier, where synergistic molecular designs can potentiate anti-tumor responses. However, optimizing these combinatorial approaches demands a deeper mechanistic and structural understanding of immune modulation at the chemical level, necessitating innovative medicinal chemistry methodologies, such as covalent fragment screening, high-throughput docking, and the design of chemically tunable immunomodulators.
This Special Issue invites original research articles, systematic reviews, and opinion pieces focusing on the medicinal chemistry of cancer immunotherapy. We particularly welcome submissions reporting the synthesis and characterization of novel immunotherapeutic agents, structure-based optimization studies, chemical biology approaches to immune regulation, and the identification of small-molecule or synthetic biomarkers relevant to immunotherapy efficacy.
Dr. Paolo Coghi
Dr. Carmine Coluccini
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- tumor microenvironment
- small molecules
- IDO1 inhibition
- checkpoint inhibitor therapy
- adoptive T cell therapy
- metabolic reprogram
- resistance mechanisms
- immune modulation
- immune reconstitution
- combination therapy
- immunosuppression
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