About this Research Topic

Background

Chemo-, radio-, and targeted therapies represent the most common options for the treatment of advanced cancers. Moreover, nowadays, immunotherapies are on the cutting edge of cancer therapy and are the first treatment interventions for some tumors such as melanoma or NSCLC. However, the resistance of cancer cells to all these treatments remains one of the most significant barriers to improving patients’ outcomes.

The aim of this article collection is to demonstrate the importance of transcriptional regulation in the plasticity of cancer cells. The selected studies will highlight processes that are associated with increased aggressiveness, eventually leading to resistance to therapies and failure of the treatment, thereby pinpointing the molecular mechanisms which underlie such effects. A more detailed understanding of these mechanisms will allow researchers to identify novel therapeutic strategies to better intervene in the progression of the disease.

While challenging from a therapeutic perspective, tackling the impact of transcription factors and their cofactors can represent a novel and effective tool for targeting cancer cells, alone or in combination with current therapies. This Research Topic welcomes Original Research, Reviews, Mini-Reviews, Opinions, and Perspective articles focused on:

1) Mechanisms of resistance to standard anti-cancer therapies involving transcription regulation.
2) Mechanisms of resistance to immunotherapies involving transcription regulation.
3) Novel functions of transcription modulators which can affect response to anti-cancer treatments.
4) Impact of the inhibition of transcription factors or cofactors or chromatin remodelers as effective tools to target cancer cells.
5) Overview of the putative families of cancer-related transcription factors that can be targeted pharmacologically.
6) Proposal of novel transcription modulators and their targets as potential cancer biomarkers for the prediction of responses to anti-cancer treatments.

Keywords: mechanisms of resistance, transcription regulation, biomarkers, chromatin remodelers, chemotherapy, targeted therapies, immunotherapies, cancer

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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