Guest Editors
Prof. Enrico Mini, Department of Health Sciences - University of Florence, Florence, Italy. E-mail: enrico.mini@unifi.it;
Prof. Guido Bocci, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: guido.bocci@unipi.it;
Prof. Antonello Di Paolo, Department of Experimental and Clinical Medicine, University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy. E-mail: antonello.dipaolo@unipi.it;
Dr. Stefania Nobili, Department of Neuroscience, Psychology, Drug Research and Child Health – NEUROFARBA - University of Florence, Firenze, Italy. E-mail: stefania.nobili@unifi.it.
Summary
Cancer drug treatment has greatly evolved in the last 20 years from the pioneering cytotoxic agents to the more selective types of anticancer drugs targeting the tumor or the tumor microenvironment specific proteins and consequently inhibiting signaling pathways responsible for tumor growth and progression, neoangiogenesis, immune surveillance escape.
A variety of drugs targeting tumor oncogenes, or other relevant deregulated tumor targets, as well as receptors, kinases and other enzymes expressed in vascular, stromal, and immune cells have paved the way to precision medicine in the treatment of cancer.
For instance, protein kinase inhibitors, monoclonal antibodies, and adoptive cell therapies have been designed, developed, and applied in clinical practice.
The presence of specific drug targets or molecular favoring conditions represent valuable biomarkers of response to drug therapies and ought to be preemptively detected.
Personalized medicine is however still limited to a minority of neoplastic patients and further research in the recognition of genetic or epigenetic alterations suitable for pharmacological targeting is needed.
Also, limitations still remain since tumors display primary and secondary resistance to both protein kinase inhibitors other tumor-specific chemical compounds and biological immunotherapeutic drugs.
Promising old and new tumor targets subject to genomic and post-genomic pharmacological modulation for improved cancer cell growth inhibition are seeked, as well as novel tumor models able to capture native growth kinetics, complexity, heterogeneity, and reciprocity between tumor and its microenvironment. This might mitigate the high failure rate of current clinical trials.
Preclinical and clinical pharmacology may thus play a fundamental role in optimizing treatments in preclinical models and in clinical trials in terms of application of rational bases for the discovery and the development of anticancer drugs as single agents or in combination. Preliminary drug synergism studies, and identification of pharmacological genotypic and phenotypic biomarkers may be of importance for optimal application of biomarker-driven therapies, monitoring drug interactions and therapy outcomes, especially adverse effects.
Artificial intelligence technologies might also be of value in enhancing these research actions in modern cancer pharmacology. The special issue welcomes submissions of review articles and original preclinical, translational, and clinical research articles.
Keywords
Preclinical and clinical cancer pharmacology, cancer therapeutics, cytotoxic agents, anti-hormonal agents, targeted therapeutics, immunotherapeutics, drug discovery, development, and clinical application, genomic and post-genomic drug targets, novel preclinical cancer models, pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics, tumor drug resistance, predictive biomarkers, drug synergism, combination therapies, drug interactions, adverse effects, precision oncology
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