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New breakthroughs and future directions in the treatment of hematological malignancies

Guest Editors:
Ajay Abraham: Northwestern University, United States
Ahmet Emre Eşkazan: Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Turkey

BMC Cancer has published this Collection on new advances in the treatment of blood cancers. 

Meet the Guest Editors

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Ajay Abraham: Northwestern University, United States

Dr. Ajay Abraham completed his doctoral studies in Hematology at Christian Medical College, Vellore, India, where he worked on drug resistance mechanisms in acute myeloid leukemia. During his postdoctoral training, Dr. Abraham continued his research in hematological malignancies studying genetic, metabolic, and epigenetic alterations in the malignant transformation of hematopoietic stem cells. As a Research Associate at Northwestern University, he studies pre-malignant hematopoiesis and defects in B-cell maturation and development. He is passionate about continuing his research in malignant hematology, leading to original and clinically relevant discoveries, and teaching and mentoring next-generation scientists and practitioners.

Ahmet Emre Eşkazan: Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Turkey

Ahmet Emre Eşkazan, MD, is a Professor of Internal Medicine and Hematology currently working in the Division of Hematology, Department of Internal Medicine at the Cerrahpaşa Faculty of Medicine of the Istanbul University-Cerrahpaşa, Istanbul. His main research topics are myeloid malignancies, including CML, MPNs, and AML. He is the head of the Chronic Myeloid Leukemia (CML) and Myeloproliferative Neoplasm (MPN) Scientific Subcommittee of the Turkish Society of Hematology and a member of the European Hematology Association Scientific Working Group on CML. Dr. Eşkazan has authored more than 150 peer-reviewed publications.

About the collection

BMC Cancer has published this Collection on new advances in the treatment of blood cancers.

Hematological malignancies are a highly heterogeneous group of cancers arising in blood and lymph-forming tissues and the fifth most common cancer type in economically developed countries. Despite remarkable progress in basic, translational, and clinical research, resulting in improved survival rates for most hematological malignancies, managing patients with relapsed/refractory cancers remains a huge challenge in clinical oncology. Indeed, new effective treatments focusing on removing malignant cells and minimizing side effects are of great importance. Targeted therapies or personalized medicine are now emerging as new therapeutic options. Therefore, identifying new potential therapeutic targets through identifying new driver mutations, studying the interactions between pathways that may promote tumor-cell growth or confer drug resistance, and investigating the interplay between cancer cells and the tumor microenvironment is paramount in blood cancer research. The advances in technology and computing play a big role in identifying new targets, leading to the ability to perform high-throughput assays, multiplexed imaging, and big-data sharing.

In recognition of this relevant field, BMC Cancer has published this Collection which encouraged submissions including but not limited to those addressing:

●    Clonal hematopoiesis and pre-malignancies
●    Biotechnological advances in cell engineering and manufacturing (iPSC-derived cell therapeutics, off-the-shelf stem cell therapies, CAR-T cell therapy)
●    Genomic landscape studies and identification of new driver mutations and molecular targets
●    Targeted immunotherapies
●    Therapeutic advances at all stages of development, from experimental treatments in animal models to clinical trials
●    Advances in bone marrow transplantation and management of therapy side effects
●    New predictive biomarkers
●    Advances in minimal residual disease evaluation
●    Mechanisms of therapeutic resistance

Image credit: SciePro / stock.adobe.com

  1. Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) is a fatal haematopoietic malignancy and is treated with the conventional combination of cytarabine (Ara-C) and daunorubicin (Dau). The survival rate of AML patients is lower due ...

    Authors: Yang Qiu, Lu Bai, Haosen Zhao and Xifan Mei
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:520
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. One-third of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) patients suffer relapse after standard treatment. Eukaryotic initiation factor 3a (eIF3a) is a key player in the initial stage of translation, which has been ...

    Authors: Hongkun Sun, Juanjuan Shang, Xiao Liu, Shuai Ren, Shunfeng Hu and Xin Wang
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:432
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. The Cluster of Differentiation 27 (CD27) is aberrantly expressed in multiple myeloma (MM) -derived. This expression facilitates the interaction between tumor and immune cells within TME via the CD27-CD70 pathw...

    Authors: Xinya Wang, Keyang Luo, Qiuting Xu, Liqun Chi, Yiwei Guo, Chuiming Jia and Lina Quan
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:352
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. HLX01 (HanliKang®) is a rituximab biosimilar that showed bioequivalence to reference rituximab in untreated CD20-positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) in the phase 3 HLX01-NHL03 study. Here, we report th...

    Authors: Yan Qin, Yongping Song, Dong Wang, Ou Bai, Jifeng Feng, Xiuhua Sun, Lihua Qiu, Jianmin Yang, Yu Yang, Zhao Wang, Jianda Hu, Huaqing Wang, Hang Su, Zhengming Jin, Wenbin Qian, Chuan Jin…
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:124
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) is known to arise through the pathogenic bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) by interacting with hematopoietic stem cells (HSC). However, due to the strong heterogeneity of ...

    Authors: Chunlai Yin, Yanqi Li, Cheng Zhang, Shizhu Zang, Zilong Wang, Xue Yan, Tonghui Ma, Xia Li and Weiping Li
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2024 24:111
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. A new type of immune cell transplantation called allogeneic NK cell infusion is proposed as a potential universal off-the-shelf cell product for adoptive immune cell therapy in hematologic malignancies.

    Authors: Mohammad Ahmadvand, Mahdieh Shokrollahi Barough, Maryam Barkhordar, Ali Faridfar, Afshin Ghaderi, Hasan Jalaeikhoo, Mohsen Rajaienejad, Keivan Majidzadeh, Ardeshir Ghavamzadeh and Ramin Sarrami-Forooshani
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:1090
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Recent achievements in cancer therapy are the use of alternating electrical fields at intermediate frequencies (100–300 kHz) and low intensities (1–3 V/cm), which specifically target cell proliferation while a...

    Authors: Elham Homami, Bahram Goliaei, Seyed Peyman Shariatpanahi and Zahra Habibi-Kelishomi
    Citation: BMC Cancer 2023 23:861
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes the submission of Research Articles. Should you wish to submit a different article type, please read our submission guidelines to confirm that type is accepted by the journal. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "New breakthroughs and future directions in the treatment of hematological malignancies" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.