Recent Advances in Hepatobiliary Cancers: From Diagnosis to Treatment (Volume II)

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue is the second edition of the Special Issue titled “Recent Advances in Hepatobiliary Cancers: From Diagnosis to Treatment”.

Hepatobiliary malignancies, including primary neoplasms of the liver (hepatocellular carcinoma [HCC] and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma) and those of the extrahepatic biliary system (distal cholangiocarcinoma and gallbladder carcinoma), are usually aggressive with poor prognosis and limited treatment options. The main objective for the early stage of these tumors is to cure the disease, yet recurrence is common, and most patients with hepatobiliary cancer present with unresectable or advanced disease. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) remain the backbone of systematic therapy for advanced HCC. However, TKIs are gradually being replaced by the combination of atezolizumab (anti-PD-L1) and bevacizumab (anti-VEGF) as first-line treatment. Due to specific challenges such as the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment of the liver, the development of immunotherapy in hepatobiliary cancers compared to other cancers has lagged. Fortunately, there are multiple early and advanced-stage ongoing clinical trials investigating the efficacy of combination therapies which might change the landscape of HCC management for different stages in the near future. For advanced biliary tract cancers, genomic characterization has paved the way for developing targeted therapies (FGFR2, IDH1, and BRAF inhibitors) and opened the door to precision medicine. More recently, adding an immunotherapy, durvalumab (anti-PD-L1), to standard chemotherapy for biliary tract cancers has shown improvement in survival. Overall, despite evolving treatment options for hepatobiliary malignancies, there is a substantial unmet clinical need for the early detection of disease, expanding current treatment approaches, such as immunotherapy, and finding novel therapies of these debilitating tumors.

For this Special Issue of Cancers, we welcome the submission of original research and review articles that provide an overview of the most recent advances and future challenges for the diagnosis and treatment of hepatobiliary cancers.

Dr. Ilyas Sahin
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. Cancers is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly 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 2900 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.

• hepatobiliary cancers
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• cholangiocarcinoma
• gallbladder cancer
• immunotherapy
• targeted therapy
• precision medicine