Tumor Progression, Microenvironments, and Therapeutics

Dear Colleagues,

Tumor progression starts from transformation, followed by early progression within the microenvironments of primary tumor tissues, blood-borne to become circulating tumor cells (CTCs), colonization into distant organs in which a pre-metastatic niche has been built, and outgrowth as secondary tumor tissues that lead to cancer death. Although innumerous efforts, i.e., chemo-, radiation-, and target-therapies, have been made to kill tumor cells, the outcome of these therapeutic strategies, mainly exerting pro-apoptotic effects on cancer cells, often leads to distant relapse and increased mortality due to drug resistance and cancer metastasis. Therefore, alternative, adjuvant, or combinatory therapeutic strategies employing less cytotoxic drugs that may target various steps of tumor progression and/or primary or distant tumor microenvironments and circumvent unwanted adverse effects caused by those pro-apoptotic cancer drugs, are urgently needed.

In this Topical Collection, advances in molecular mechanisms underlying tumor progression and therapeutic approaches, either targeting tumor cells or tumor microenvironments to fight against cancer will be presented in identifying less cytotoxic drugs, including, but not limited to, repurposed drugs, phytochemical agents, synthetic compounds or small molecules, nutrients in foods, siRNA, miRNAs, lncRNAs, antibodies, and other protein drugs, to serve as an alternative, adjuvant, or combinatory cancer therapeutics and understanding the underlying molecular mechanisms.

We welcome full communications, full reviews, perspectives, case reports (for very rare diseases) and original research articles.

Prof. Dr. Hung-Chi Cheng
Prof. Dr. Chun-Li Su
Prof. Dr. Ming-Fen Lee
Collection Editors

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