Biological Relevance and Therapeutic Potential of G-Quadruplexes in Cancer
A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Cancer Biology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 December 2022) | Viewed by 2108
Special Issue Editors
Interests: DNA and RNA G-quadruplexes; G-quadruplexes aptamers; G-quadruplex ligands; biomolecular interactions; biophysical techniques; drug design and development; cancer; drug delivery systems
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: biopharmaceuticals; recombinant production; downstream processing; chromatography; gene therapy; gene silencing; health biotechnology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
DNA and RNA can adopt four-stranded G-quadruplex (G4) structures through self-association of four guanine bases by Hoogsteen hydrogen bonding within a planar G-tetrad.
Self-stacking of two or more G-tetrads generates a G4 structure that is further stabilized by cations (mainly potassium or sodium) and small molecules, which have been evaluated as a novel anti-cancer strategy.
Several biophysical and structural studies evidence G4 formation in regulatory regions, such as human telomeres, oncogene-promoter regions, replication initiation sites, and 5′- and 3′-untranslated regions (UTR) of mRNA. For example, several experiments using molecular and cell biology methods have demonstrated that G4s exist in chromatin DNA and in RNA, linking G4s to biological processes ranging from transcription and translation to genome instability and cancer, emerging as a new class of molecular targets for drug development.
This Special Issue will highlight the DNA and RNA G4s’ biological roles and mechanisms of action to better understand the molecular basis of related diseases as well as to envision the development of novel therapeutic strategies. This will cover both basic and (pre)clinical aspects that will advance our understanding of the possibility to target these structures in human tumors and unravel the relation between G4 formation and lethality of cancer cells to consider G4s as therapeutic targets in cancer.
Dr. Carla Cruz
Dr. Fani Pereira de Sousa
Guest Editors
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.
Keywords
- DNA and RNA G-quadruplexes
- G-quadruplex (G4)
- novel anti-cancer strategy
- molecular targets
- cancer
