Precision Cancer Medicine: Molecular Biological Insights

Dear Colleagues,

Therapeutic resistance and relapse rates remain alarmingly high following standard treatment in cancer patients. The development of meaningful therapy to prevent recurrence in locoregional disease and to substantially improve recurrence-free survival in advanced or metastatic settings remain unmet needs. The advent of multidimensional omics and genome editing technologies at bulk, and particularly at a single-cell resolution, have revolutionized cancer research and therapy over the preceding decade. Patient-specific mutational landscape and tumor molecular profiling have enabled efficient matched targeted therapy. However, prospective validation studies and clinical trials, integrating artificial intelligence and machine learning for the analysis of big standard and multi-omics data, are required to establish precision oncology in clinical practice. The use of high dimensional single-cell multi-omics has resulted in rapid advances in understanding biological events underlying precision immunotherapy including immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive T cell therapy and vaccines. The unprecedented capacity of multi-omics, with emphasis on single-cell transcriptome analysis, has uncovered tumor-specific subsets of T cells within the tumor microenvironment. A prime paradigm in the emerging era of precision immuno-oncology represents a pioneering phase I clinical trial, combining individualized mRNA vaccines with atezolizumab and mFOLFIRINOX. In this study, 50% of the patients had an extended period of recurrence-free survival, surpassing 18 months. Ultimately, the deciphering of intratumor molecular and cellular interactions combining spatial transcriptomics with single-cell RNA sequencing is shaping the developmental roadmap towards next-generation tumor systems and network-based therapies.

The present Special Issue, entitled “Precision Cancer Medicine: Molecular Biological Insights”, aims to present recent research developments on Precision Cancer Medicine to those involved in this field and the wider community. We welcome contributions from original articles and reviews which focus on topics within this field.

Prof. Dr. Dimitrios H. Roukos
Guest Editor

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• multi-omics at bulk level
• single-cell multi-omics
• precision oncology
• precision immune-oncology
• tumor molecular profiling