About this Research Topic
Melanoma is leading the field of cancer, in which both targeted therapy and immunotherapy have produced major clinically effective advancements during the last decade. Despite such a paradigm-shifting success in melanoma therapy, most patients still do not respond (at all or in a durable manner). Many questions remain about how best to select patients who will benefit from such therapies, as well as how to optimally integrate the innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies with the conventional ones. Furthermore, new therapeutic strategies are being steadily introduced into the pharmacological armamentarium at earlier stages of the disease (currently, at stage III AJCC; interventions are hypothesized for the localized high-risk disease - Stage IIC AJCC or below). Adjuvant and neoadjuvant treatments are demonstrating greater efficacy in reducing disease progression and improving survival. There is a need to clarify the best way to drive these enormous changes in the management of melanoma patients.
Optimizing melanoma patients’ classification strategies could help elucidate the understanding of the tumor and its microenvironment at the cellular and molecular level, the ability to select the right melanoma patients for innovative treatments (targeted and immune therapies, given in sequence or combination), and how administration timing (when a feasible neoadjuvant therapy should be preferred over adjuvant treatment in early disease stages) can be tailored to the individual patient’s disease. Due to the complexity of tumor biology, it is unlikely that a single biomarker will be adequate to predict prognosis and/or clinical response in melanoma patients. Schemes and processes that systematically integrate pathological, morphological, and molecular information to be correlated to patient outcomes are strongly needed.
This Research Topic is aimed at presenting updated criteria to be used in clinical practice for the improvement of diagnosis (early detection or disease classification) and prognosis of melanoma; focusing on the strategies to integrate comprehensive research data for developing clinically relevant information on how to translate scientific research from bench to bedside; elucidating the determinants involved in the prediction of therapy responsiveness among melanoma patients, either from clinical or basic studies.
We welcome Review or Original Research manuscripts that explore, but are not limited to, the following list of themes:
● Image analysis and molecular genetics in melanoma pathology
● Molecular classification of melanoma patients
● Biomarkers and molecular inhibitors in melanoma
● Molecular inhibitors for subsets of melanoma patients
● New strategies for the treatment of advanced melanoma
● New strategies for the adjuvant and/or neoadjuvant treatment of melanoma
● Adverse events of molecular inhibitors
Optimizing melanoma patients’ classification strategies could help elucidate the understanding of the tumor and its microenvironment at the cellular and molecular level, the ability to select the right melanoma patients for innovative treatments (targeted and immune therapies, given in sequence or combination), and how administration timing (when a feasible neoadjuvant therapy should be preferred over adjuvant treatment in early disease stages) can be tailored to the individual patient’s disease. Due to the complexity of tumor biology, it is unlikely that a single biomarker will be adequate to predict prognosis and/or clinical response in melanoma patients. Schemes and processes that systematically integrate pathological, morphological, and molecular information to be correlated to patient outcomes are strongly needed.
This Research Topic is aimed at presenting updated criteria to be used in clinical practice for the improvement of diagnosis (early detection or disease classification) and prognosis of melanoma; focusing on the strategies to integrate comprehensive research data for developing clinically relevant information on how to translate scientific research from bench to bedside; elucidating the determinants involved in the prediction of therapy responsiveness among melanoma patients, either from clinical or basic studies.
We welcome Review or Original Research manuscripts that explore, but are not limited to, the following list of themes:
● Image analysis and molecular genetics in melanoma pathology
● Molecular classification of melanoma patients
● Biomarkers and molecular inhibitors in melanoma
● Molecular inhibitors for subsets of melanoma patients
● New strategies for the treatment of advanced melanoma
● New strategies for the adjuvant and/or neoadjuvant treatment of melanoma
● Adverse events of molecular inhibitors
Keywords: Melanoma pathology, Molecular classification, Biomarkers, Treatment strategies, Disease management
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.
