Bone and Soft Tissue Sarcomas: Current Challenges and Future Directions

Dear Colleagues,

Bone and soft tissue sarcomas are rare cancers that may imply high morbidity and poor disease specific survival despite current treatment modalities. While these tumors typically share a mesenchymal stem cell origin, they are typically characterized by tremendous genetic heterogeneity. For sarcomas as a whole, surgery is generally the mainstay of treatment, though adjuvant therapies typically differ depending on histologic type. For patients with osteosarcoma, chemotherapy dramatically improves survival rates; however, advances in adjuvant treatments have stagnated over the past 30–40 years. For chondrosarcoma, appropriate diagnosis and management continues to be a challenge and a continued subject of debate. In contrast, soft tissue sarcoma is a general term that encompasses over 70 histological subtypes. Radiation therapy is typically a component of the management of these tumors, though novel technologies such as proton beam therapy and carbon ion therapy hold additional promise. Owing to their collective rarity, research on sarcomas is inherently challenging; however, continued collaborative scientific efforts have helped to push the field forward.

This Special Issue aims to update the current challenges and future directions in the diagnosis, treatment and overall management of bone and soft tissue sarcomas in order to highlight the multidisciplinary approaches, personalized treatment strategies, and promising therapeutic approaches to the treatment of these challenging disease entitites. Continued research is needed to identify current obstacles and explore novel solutions to help optimize patient care, with a focus on how the integration of different treatment modalities can improve patient outcomes. Some of these areas include the development of improved models of sarcoma in the laboratory space, such as 3D organoids and comparative oncology, the investigation of liquid biopsy techniques and cDNA, the development of novel drug delivery mechanisms, the identication of novel drug targets, investigations into the immune system interaction in sarcoma, the potential role of immunotherapy, and explorations of how surgical advances, such as customized 3D printed implants, intraoperative margin detection, and navigated tumor resections, can improve outcomes in patients with these tumors.

Dr. Alexander L. Lazarides
Dr. Odion T. Binitie
Guest Editors

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• sarcoma
• bone sarcoma
• soft tissue sarcoma
• osteosarcoma
• liquid biopsy
• immunotherapy
• surgical outcomes
• radiation therapy
• chemotherapy