Precision Medicine and Rare Cancers
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Pathology, Diagnostics, and Therapeutics".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2026 | Viewed by 84
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
we are pleased to announce this Special Issue, which will highlight initiatives and the latest research results supporting the development and application of precision medicine for rare cancers. Rare cancers account for 20-30% of newly diagnosed cancers, making rare cancers the largest group of cancers globally. Despite recent advances in diagnostic genomic profiling and the increased use of genomic medicine for the treatment of cancer, rare cancers remain underrepresented and underfunded across all areas of development in cancer care, from drug development to policy and from services to research. Only a handful of the latest targeted therapies are utilized for the treatment of rare cancers, and the prognosis for many rare cancers, especially in advanced or metastatic settings, is dismal. Because of the infrequency of different rare cancer types, these cancers pose distinct challenges for both pre-clinical and clinical research, including the limited availability of in vitro models, low patient populations limiting trial recruitment, geographical dispersion, and a general limited understanding of the pathology of many of these cancers. To facilitate the development of novel therapies and rapid implementation of precision medicine for rare cancers, alternative strategies are urgently needed, and empirical evidence, even from small patient series or novel in vitro models, can change the treatment paradigm for individual rare cancers and patients.
For this Special Issue, we encourage the research community to share your latest results in rare cancer, including, but not limited to, in vitro and ex vivo research and models, biomarkers and novel diagnostics, drug repurposing studies, adaptive clinical study settings, and case studies.
We encourage the submission of original research articles and reviews, especially those that provide insights at the molecular level into different rare cancers, biomarkers, and novel therapeutic opportunities.
Dr. Juha Rantala
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 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.
Keywords
- precision medicine
- rare cancers
- biomarkers
- targeted therapies
- tumor models
- drug repurposing
- ex vivo drug screening
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