Advances in Thoracic Oncology Research

A special issue of Cancers (ISSN 2072-6694). This special issue belongs to the section "Cancer Therapy".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 November 2025 | Viewed by 1300

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Division of Thoracic Surgery, European Institute of Oncology, Via Giuseppe Ripamonti, 435, 20141 Milano, Italy
Interests: lung cancer; mediastinal neoplasms; mesothelioma; pleural disease; less invasive techniques; induction therapies
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The last decade has been characterized by significant changes in the diagnosis and therapy in the field of thoracic oncology, with medical oncologists and thoracic surgeons approaching the treatment of thoracic malignancies with new diagnostic and therapeutic tools. The wide and diffuse use of biomarker tests led medical oncologists to provide targeted and personalized therapies (i.e., tyrosine kinase inhibitors and/or immune checkpoint inhibitors) both for early and advanced lung cancer stages, which led to promising results in terms of long-term survival. From a surgical point of view, new emerging tools in both surgical practice (less invasive techniques, robotic approaches, etc.) and in postoperative management have demonstrated large benefits for the patients. Radiation therapy has also played an important role in the treatment of chest tumors more often within a multidisciplinary program.

This Special Issue of Cancers will focus on advances in thoracic oncology research, providing an overview of recent advances in the diagnosis and treatment of lung cancer (from early stages to advanced non-small-cell lung cancer and neuroendocrine tumors), mediastinal tumors (including thymic neoplasms—thymoma, thymic carcinoma, rare thymic tumors, and endothoracic neurogenic neoplasms), neoplasm of the pleura (primary one, as mesothelioma, or secondary) and tumors of the chest wall.

We encourage all colleagues (surgeons, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists and radiologists) to contribute original research articles and reviews to this Special Issue.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Domenico Galetta
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 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

  • lung cancer
  • mediastinal
  • thymic
  • neuroendocrine
  • robotic
  • VATS
  • chest wall
  • chemotherapy
  • immunotherapy
  • radiotherapy

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

17 pages, 1105 KiB  
Article
Plasmatic Inactive IL-18 Predicts a Worse Overall Survival for Advanced Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer with Early Metabolic Progression after Immunotherapy Initiation
by Serena Janho dit Hreich, Olivier Humbert, Tanguy Pacé-Loscos, Renaud Schiappa, Thierry Juhel, Marius Ilié, Victoria Ferrari, Jonathan Benzaquen, Paul Hofman and Valérie Vouret-Craviari
Cancers 2024, 16(12), 2226; https://doi.org/10.3390/cancers16122226 - 14 Jun 2024
Viewed by 741
Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess the potential value of circulating active and inactive IL-18 levels in distinguishing pseudo and true tumor progression among NSCLC patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor treatments (ICIs). Methods: This ancillary study includes 195 patients with metastatic [...] Read more.
The aim of this study was to assess the potential value of circulating active and inactive IL-18 levels in distinguishing pseudo and true tumor progression among NSCLC patients receiving immune checkpoint inhibitor treatments (ICIs). Methods: This ancillary study includes 195 patients with metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with ICI in monotherapy, either pembrolizumab or nivolumab. Plasmatic levels of IL-18-related compounds, comprising the inhibitor IL-18 binding protein (IL-18BP), the inactive IL-18 (corresponding to IL-18/IL-18BP complex), and the active free IL-18, were assayed by ELISA. Objective tumoral response was analyzed by 18FDG PET-CT at baseline, 7 weeks, and 3 months post treatment induction, using PERCIST criteria. Results: Plasmatic IL-18BP and total IL-18 levels are increased at baseline in NSCLC patients compared with healthy controls, whereas IL-18/IL-18BP complexes are decreased, and free IL-18 levels remain unchanged. Neither of the IL-18-related compounds allowed to discriminate ICI responding to nonresponding patients. However, inactive IL-18 levels allowed to discriminate patients with a first tumor progression, assessed after 7 weeks of treatment, with worse overall survival. In addition, we showed that neutrophil concentration is also a predictive indicator of patients’ outcomes with OS (HR = 2.6, p = 0.0001) and PFS (HR = 2.2, p = 0.001). Conclusions: Plasmatic levels of inactive IL-18, combined with circulating neutrophil concentrations, can effectively distinguish ICI nonresponding patients with better overall survival (OS), potentially guiding rapid decisions for therapeutic intensification. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Thoracic Oncology Research)
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