Research on Targeted Drugs in Cancer

Dear Colleagues,

Over the past two decades, the emergence of targeted therapies has transformed the therapeutic landscape for cancer treatment. Unlike conventional chemotherapies, which indiscriminately destroy both malignant and non-malignant cells, targeted therapies are designed to act specifically on cancer cells harboring particular mutations. This revolutionary precision medicine approach has resulted in effective tumor regression with reduced off-target toxicity relative to traditional chemotherapeutic agents. The early success of targeted therapies like the tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib (which dramatically improved survival rates for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia following its Food and Drug Administration [FDA] approval in 2001), combined with advances in genome sequencing technology, has led to a shift in the drug discovery process. With efforts turned toward the identification of druggable molecular alterations, the development of targeted drugs and biologics has flourished, rapidly encompassing the largest proportion of new oncology therapies approved by the FDA in the 21st century. The addition of these agents to the oncologist’s armamentarium has contributed to significant reductions in mortality for several cancers in recent years, including lung cancer and melanoma. Targeted therapies now feature prominently in oncology clinical practice guidelines, and next-generation sequencing to identify actionable mutations has become part of the standard-of-care practice for multiple cancers. Despite this extraordinary progress, resistance to targeted cancer therapies remains a challenge, and continued research to define strategies for preventing and overcoming resistance is warranted.

For this Special Issue of Cancers, we are interested in original research and review articles covering a broad range of topics related to targeted therapies, including (but not limited to) novel targets, clinical and regulatory aspects of development, and investigation into drug resistance mechanisms and management.

Dr. Marjorie E. Zettler
Dr. Bertal Aktas
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.