Forward Thinking towards Theranostic (Radio)ligands Targeting the Tumor Microenvironment (TME)
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Radiopharmaceutical Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (18 March 2022) | Viewed by 34246
Special Issue Editors
Interests: radiopharmaceutical sciences; medicinal chemistry; labeling chemistry; organic chemistry; chemical biology; PET tracers; radiopharmaceuticals for diagnostics and endoradiotherapy; small molecules; peptides
Interests: radiopharmaceutical drug development; radiopharmaceutical sciences; medicinal radiochemistry; radionuclide theranostics; targeted endoradiotherapy; noninvasive molecular imaging; PET; SPECT
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Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The tumor microenvironment is a very dynamic immunosuppressive network, comprising a range of T cells, B cells, and NK cells which, together with endothelia, associate with the extracellular matrix and cancer cells. Within that network, adipocytes, regulatory T (Treg) cells, fibroblasts, macrophages, and cytokines promote cellular proliferation in all stages of cancer. Therefore, these cellular components represent interesting targets for the therapy of cancers. In addition, they can serve as imaging biomarkers for early detection of tumor disease and monitoring treatment response. In recent years, immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy has become a promising new cancer treatment option. However, on average only 30% of patients respond after checkpoint inhibitor monotherapy. In order to identify such patients prior to therapy, molecular imaging techniques such as PET and SPECT are advantageous over classical immunohistochemistry methods, because they can fully address the issue of heterogeneous expression of checkpoints over time, e.g., PD-L1 or CTLA-4. Providing clinicians with a diagnostic tool for supporting therapy decisions is therefore very attractive and should fuel the development of new radiotracers targeting the tumor microenvironment. Additionally, theranostic approaches including endoradiotherapy and (radio)immunotherapy as well as cellular therapies for addressing targets within the tumor microenvironment hold the potential for treating patients.
We would like to invite you to contribute reviews or original research articles covering the different facets of the emerging field of tumor-microenvironment-targeting (radio)ligands, which will be published as part of a Special Issue entitled “Forward Thinking towards Theranostic (Radio)ligands Targeting the Tumor Microenvironment (TME)”.
Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Development of small (non-peptide)-molecule-derived theranostic radioligands, (oligo)peptides and peptidomimetic radioligands targeting receptors within the tumor microenvironment for imaging and therapy, such as checkpoint inhibitors (e.g., PD-L1, CTLA-4);
- Antibodies and derivatives thereof, fragments, affibodies, diabodies radiolabeled with diagnostic and/or therapeutic radionuclides for imaging and/or therapy within the tumor microenvironment;
- (Radio)immunotherapy and cellular therapy such as CAR T cell therapy approaches applying the immune protein or immune cells as a therapeutic agent;
- Preclinical in vitro and in vivo evaluations of the aforementioned radioligands;
- Clinical evaluation in clinical research and clinical trials.
Dr. Sven Stadlbauer
Dr. Klaus Kopka
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- molecular imaging (PET, SPECT)
- theranostics
- (radio)immunotherapy
- checkpoint inhibitors
- tumor microenvironment
- cellular therapy
- nuclear medicine
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