Dear Colleagues,

It is our pleasure to announce the launch of a new Special Issue of Proteomes, entitled “Proteomics in Cancer and Personalized Medicine”. For decades, cancer has been one of the leading causes of human death worldwide. Numerous ongoing studies are focused on cancer, aiming to develop new approaches for cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. Cancer, however, is still an incurable disease, which imposes an urgent need to find more effective and lasting cancer therapeutics. We hope that this Special Issue will contribute to this effort. It is known that the development and progression of cancer are dependent on many factors. These factors can be broadly divided into those related to genetics and others related to epigenetics. While genetics studies changes in gene expression as a result of changes in DNA sequences, epigenetics studies changes in gene expression through mechanisms independent of the change of DNA sequences. Both genetic and epigenetic factors can be very different in different patients, due to the different genetic makeup and exposure to the environment. This explains why patients can respond differently to standard cancer therapy. Therefore, a new concept, known as personalized medicine or precision medicine, has been proposed. The idea is to tailor the treatment for each patient according to their genetic and epigenetic conditions. Because proteins are the ultimate carriers of genes’ functions, Proteomics, which is the study of proteins and their functions, can play an important role in guiding decisions around personalized medicine. In this regard, although many recent studies of cancer and personalized medicine have focused on mutations or other changes of DNA sequences of genes, these genomic changes should be ultimately revealed by the corresponding changes of the proteins. Furthermore, certain changes in proteins, such as those resulting from protein–protein interactions or post-translational modifications, may not be revealed by a change in the genome. Thus, studies of proteomics can play a more definitive and inclusive role in guiding future personalized medicine in cancer.

This Special Issue of Proteomes invites submissions of all original research and review articles related to the use and development of proteomic tools in areas of cancer and precision medicine. The responsive studies may include but are not limited to (i) studies of cancer cell proteomes such as protein expression, modification, and protein complex composition, (ii) analyses of proteomic differences between healthy individuals and cancer patients, different patients, or patients at various stages of cancer development and progression, (iii) development of proteomic tools for use in cancer prevention/diagnosis/treatment, (iv) development of proteomic tools for use in personalized medicine, and (iv) integration of studies of genomics and proteomics, for example, studying the impact of gene mutations on cancer cell proteome. We welcome submissions at all levels of basic, translational, and clinical studies of cancer and personalized medicine.

Dr. Jinsong Zhang
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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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. Proteomes is an international peer-reviewed open access quarterly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). 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.

• Cancer proteome
• Cancer proteomics
• personalized medicine
• precision medicine
• characterization of protein complexes
• post-translational modification
• histone modification
• epigenetics
• Cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment
• novel proteomic tools