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Molecular understanding and clinical aspects of immunotherapy in the treatment of cancer

Molecular Cancer invites submissions to this article collection. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, adoptive cellular immunotherapy, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) immunotherapy, immune checkpoint inhibitors, modulators of tumor microenvironment, and drug resistance mechanisms in immunotherapy.

The collection is open to submissions from August 15th to September 15th 2023.


  1. Undeniably, cancer immunotherapies have expanded the spectrum of cancer treatment, however, some patients do not respond to immunotherapies. This scenario is no different for lung cancer, whose two main types,...

    Authors: Yutao Li, Amit Sharma and Ingo G.H. Schmidt-Wolf
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2024 23:80
  2. Treatment for renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has improved dramatically over the last decade, shifting from high-dose cytokine therapy in combination with surgical resection of tumors to targeted therapy, immunothe...

    Authors: Yufei Wang, Eloah Rabello Suarez, Gabriella Kastrunes, Najla Santos Pacheco de Campos, Rabia Abbas, Renata Schmieder Pivetta, Nithyassree Murugan, Ghanbar Mahmoodi Chalbatani, Vincent D’Andrea and Wayne A. Marasco
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2024 23:8
  3. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have revolutionized cancer therapy, yet the efficacy of these treatments is often limited by the heterogeneous and hypoxic tumor microenvironment (TME) of solid tumors. In the TME,...

    Authors: Philipp Knopf, Dimitri Stowbur, Sabrina H. L. Hoffmann, Natalie Hermann, Andreas Maurer, Valentina Bucher, Marilena Poxleitner, Bredi Tako, Dominik Sonanini, Balaji Krishnamachary, Sanhita Sinharay, Birgit Fehrenbacher, Irene Gonzalez-Menendez, Felix Reckmann, David Bomze, Lukas Flatz…
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:207
  4. Tumor immunotherapy has transformed neoplastic disease management, yet low response rates and immune complications persist as major challenges. Extracellular vesicles including exosomes have emerged as therape...

    Authors: Ming Yue, Shengyun Hu, Haifeng Sun, Baojing Tuo, Bin Jia, Chen Chen, Wenkang Wang, Jinbo Liu, Yang Liu, Zhenqiang Sun and Junhong Hu
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:203
  5. Autophagy is an essential cellular homeostasis pathway initiated by multiple stimuli ranging from nutrient deprivation to viral infection, playing a key role in human health and disease. At present, a growing ...

    Authors: Manuela Giansanti, Tobias Theinert, Sarah Katharina Boeing, Dorothee Haas, Paul-Gerhardt Schlegel, Paola Vacca, Francesca Nazio and Ignazio Caruana
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:201
  6. Immunotherapies have revolutionized the treatment paradigms of various types of cancers. However, most of these immunomodulatory strategies focus on harnessing adaptive immunity, mainly by inhibiting immunosup...

    Authors: Ming Yi, Tianye Li, Mengke Niu, Qi Mei, Bin Zhao, Qian Chu, Zhijun Dai and Kongming Wu
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:187
  7. Currently, only limited knowledge is available regarding the phenotypic association between fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) alterations and the tumor microenvironment (TME) in bladder cancer (BLCA).

    Authors: Kazumasa Komura, Kensuke Hirosuna, Satoshi Tokushige, Takuya Tsujino, Kazuki Nishimura, Mitsuaki Ishida, Takuo Hayashi, Ayako Ura, Takaya Ohno, Shogo Yamazaki, Keita Nakamori, Shoko Kinoshita, Ryoichi Maenosono, Masahiko Ajiro, Yuki Yoshikawa, Tomoaki Takai…
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:185
  8. Stimulating inflammatory tumor associated macrophages can overcome resistance to PD-(L)1 blockade. We previously conducted a phase I trial of cabiralizumab (anti-CSF1R), sotigalimab (CD40-agonist) and nivoluma...

    Authors: Dijana Djureinovic, Sarah A. Weiss, Irina Krykbaeva, Rihao Qu, Ioannis Vathiotis, Myrto Moutafi, Lin Zhang, Ana L. Perdigoto, Wei Wei, Gail Anderson, William Damsky, Michael Hurwitz, Barbara Johnson, David Schoenfeld, Amit Mahajan, Frank Hsu…
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:182
  9. Immunotherapy has recently emerged as a treatment strategy which stimulates the human immune system to kill tumor cells. Tumor immunotherapy is based on immune editing, which enhances the antigenicity of tumor...

    Authors: Yang Liu, Yueting Hu, Jinqi Xue, Jingying Li, Jiang Yi, Jiawen Bu, Zhenyong Zhang, Peng Qiu and Xi Gu
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:145

    The Correction to this article has been published in Molecular Cancer 2023 22:154

  10. Recent introduction of monoclonal antibodies targeting immune checkpoints to harness antitumor immunity has revolutionized the cancer treatment landscape. The therapeutic success of immune checkpoint blockade ...

    Authors: Christian Sordo-Bahamonde, Seila Lorenzo-Herrero, Rocío Granda-Díaz, Alejandra Martínez-Pérez, Candelaria Aguilar-García, Juan P. Rodrigo, Juana M. García-Pedrero and Segundo Gonzalez
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:142
  11. New therapies are urgently needed in melanoma, particularly in late-stage patients not responsive to immunotherapies and kinase inhibitors. To uncover novel potentiators of T cell anti-tumor immunity, we carri...

    Authors: Paweł Stachura, Wei Liu, Haifeng C. Xu, Agnès Wlodarczyk, Olivia Stencel, Piyush Pandey, Melina Vogt, Sanil Bhatia, Daniel Picard, Marc Remke, Karl S. Lang, Dieter Häussinger, Bernhard Homey, Philipp A. Lang, Arndt Borkhardt and Aleksandra A. Pandyra
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:136
  12. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) -T cell therapy is an efficient therapeutic strategy for specific hematologic malignancies. However, positive outcomes of this novel therapy in treating solid tumors are curtail...

    Authors: Jian Chen, Tianchuan Zhu, Guanmin Jiang, Qi Zeng, Zhijian Li and Xi Huang
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:131
  13. The diagnosis of brain metastasis (BrM) has historically been a dooming diagnosis that is nothing less than a death sentence, with few treatment options for palliation or prolonging life. Among the few treatme...

    Authors: Aatiya Ahmad, Parvez Khan, Asad Ur Rehman, Surinder Kumar Batra and Mohd Wasim Nasser
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:111
  14. Breast cancer is the second leading cause of death for women worldwide. The heterogeneity of this disease presents a big challenge in its therapeutic management. However, recent advances in molecular biology a...

    Authors: Feng Ye, Saikat Dewanjee, Yuehua Li, Niraj Kumar Jha, Zhe-Sheng Chen, Ankush Kumar, Vishakha, Tapan Behl, Saurabh Kumar Jha and Hailin Tang
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:105
  15. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) T cells are now standard of care (SOC) for some patients with B cell and plasma cell malignancies and could disrupt the therapeutic landscape of solid tumors. However, access to...

    Authors: Hyatt Balke-Want, Vimal Keerthi, Nikolaos Gkitsas, Andrew G. Mancini, Gavin L. Kurgan, Carley Fowler, Peng Xu, Xikun Liu, Kyle Asano, Sunny Patel, Christopher J. Fisher, Annie K. Brown, Ramya H. Tunuguntla, Shabnum Patel, Elena Sotillo, Crystal L. Mackall…
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:100
  16. Over the past decade, immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have emerged as a revolutionary cancer treatment modality, offering long-lasting responses and survival benefits for a substantial number of cancer pat...

    Authors: Xianjing Chu, Wentao Tian, Ziqi Wang, Jing Zhang and Rongrong Zhou
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:93

    The Correction to this article has been published in Molecular Cancer 2023 22:101

  17. CAR T cell-based therapies have revolutionized the treatment of hematological malignancies such as leukemia and lymphoma within the last years. In contrast to the success in hematological cancers, the treatmen...

    Authors: Lusine Hovhannisyan, Carsten Riether, Daniel M. Aebersold, Michaela Medová and Yitzhak Zimmer
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:82
  18. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T-cell therapy has made remarkable progress in cancer immunotherapy, but several challenges with unclear mechanisms hinder its wide clinical application. Single-cell sequencing ...

    Authors: Shengkang Huang, Xinyu Wang, Yu Wang, Yajing Wang, Chenglong Fang, Yazhuo Wang, Sifei Chen, Runkai Chen, Tao Lei, Yuchen Zhang, Xinjie Xu and Yuhua Li
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:80
  19. The development of cancer immunotherapeutic strategies relies on the identification and validation of optimal target tumor antigens, which should be tumor-specific as well as able to elicit a swift and potent ...

    Authors: Maria Tagliamonte, Beatrice Cavalluzzo, Angela Mauriello, Concetta Ragone, Franco M. Buonaguro, Maria Lina Tornesello and Luigi Buonaguro
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:75
  20. Mesenchymal gastrointestinal cancers are represented by the gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) which occur throughout the whole gastrointestinal tract, and affect human health and economy globally. Curati...

    Authors: Bo Li, Hui Chen, Shaohua Yang, Feng Chen, Liangliang Xu, Yan Li, Mingzhe Li, Chengming Zhu, Fangyuan Shao, Xinhua Zhang, Chuxia Deng, Leli Zeng, Yulong He and Changhua Zhang
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:71
  21. The development of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a multi-step process, and its survival depends on a complex tumor ecosystem, which not only promotes tumor growth but also helps to protect t...

    Authors: Yingying Gong, Lisha Bao, Tong Xu, Xiaofen Yi, Jinming Chen, Shanshan Wang, Zongfu Pan, Ping Huang and Minghua Ge
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:68
  22. B7-H3 (CD276), a member of the B7 family of proteins, is a key player in cancer progression. This immune checkpoint molecule is selectively expressed in both tumor cells and immune cells within the tumor micro...

    Authors: Ayechew Adera Getu, Abiye Tigabu, Ming Zhou, Jianrong Lu, Øystein Fodstad and Ming Tan
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:43
  23. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methylation is the most universal internal modification in eukaryotic mRNA. With elaborate functions executed by m6A writers, erasers, and readers, m6A modulation is involved in myriad ph...

    Authors: Xiaoxue Cao, Qishun Geng, Danping Fan, Qiong Wang, Xing Wang, Mengxiao Zhang, Lu Zhao, Yi Jiao, Tingting Deng, Honglin Liu, Jing Zhou, Liqun Jia and Cheng Xiao
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:42
  24. Ongoing research has revealed that the existence of cancer stem cells (CSCs) is one of the biggest obstacles in the current cancer therapy. CSCs make an influential function in tumor progression, recurrence an...

    Authors: Bo Wu, Xiang Shi, Meixi Jiang and Hongxu Liu
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:38
  25. Several mechanisms and cell types are involved in the regulation of the immune response. These include mostly regulatory T cells (Tregs), regulatory macrophages (Mregs), myeloid suppressor cells (MDSCs) and ot...

    Authors: María Iglesias-Escudero, Noelia Arias-González and Eva Martínez-Cáceres
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:26
  26. Cancer remains a leading cause of death worldwide, placing a significant burden on healthcare systems as well as the global economy. Rare cancers comprise a group of about 200 cancers that individually occur a...

    Authors: Sneha Vivekanandhan, Deborah Bahr, Ashish Kothari, Mohammed Ali Ashary, Mizba Baksh and Emmanuel Gabriel
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2023 22:23
  27. The quality and quantity of tumor neoantigens derived from tumor mutations determines the fate of the immune response in cancer. Frameshift mutations elicit better tumor neoantigens, especially when they are n...

    Authors: Daniel Meraviglia-Crivelli, Helena Villanueva, Angelina Zheleva, María Villalba-Esparza, Beatriz Moreno, Ashwathi Puravankara Menon, Alfonso Calvo, Javier Cebollero, Martin Barainka, Igor Ruiz de los Mozos, Carlos Huesa-Berral and Fernando Pastor
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2022 21:211
  28. Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell (CAR-T cell) therapy based on gene editing technology represents a significant breakthrough in personalized immunotherapy for human cancer. This strategy uses genetic mod...

    Authors: Chunrun Qu, Hao Zhang, Hui Cao, Lanhua Tang, Haoyang Mo, Fangkun Liu, Liyang Zhang, Zhenjie Yi, Lifu Long, Luzhe Yan, Zeyu Wang, Nan Zhang, Peng Luo, Jian Zhang, Zaoqu Liu, Weijie Ye…
    Citation: Molecular Cancer 2022 21:201