Trabectedin, Lurbinectedin, and Other Marine-Derived Anticancer Alkaloids on Solid Cancer: Mechanisms of Action, Clinical Impact, and Future Perspectives

Several marine natural products have been found to exhibit anticancer activity in vitro and in vivo on a wide range of tumors. Indeed, marine flora, including microalgae, fungi, seaweeds, mangroves, bacteria, cyanobacteria, actinobacteria, and halophytes represent an extremely important oceanic resource in the field of anticancer drug discovery. Trabectedin is one of the first marine-derived anti-neoplastic drug approved for the treatment of solid cancers, including advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS) and relapsed platinum-sensitive ovarian cancer (OC). From the very beginning, trabectedin showed some peculiar properties that clearly distinguished it from other anticancer alkaloids and that oriented its subsequent clinical development. Actually, after 10 years of use in cancer treatment, trabectedin may have not finished to provide suggestions of a possible even more large anti-tumor activity than so far reported. As evolution, lurbinectedin is a marine-derived analogue of trabectedin with different pharmacological properties that appears to expand the spectrum of activity of this class of compounds, paving the way for new investigations in the field. Accordingly, starting from the exploration of a great scope of chemically unique, biologically active and diverse sea-flora components, several other anticancer marine-derived products are under evaluation.

The Research Topic will draw attention to valuable insights highlighting the present activity of trabectedin, lurbinectedion and possibly other marine-derived anticancer alkaloids in oncology (biology and clinical) and its possible future implications in different cancer fields, recapitulating old and new evidence.

Manuscripts should mainly focus on:

1. Trabectedin and Lurbinectedin: mechanisms of action and implications for clinical activity and toxicity
2, The role of Trabectedin in STS and OC: current evidences and perspectives
3. Trabectedin: preclinical and clinical experiences in different solid cancers, including (but not limited to) breast cancer, gastro-intestinal cancer, lung cancer, genito-urinary cancer
5. Lurbinectedin: clinical evidences and perspectives in oncology
6. Novel anticancer bioactive alkaloids and other products derived from marine sources

Note:

1. Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics, computational analysis, or predictions of public databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) will not be accepted in any of the sections of Frontiers in Oncology.

2. Manuscripts testing/summarizing anti-cancer focused natural product research and pharmacological approaches derived from traditional medicine should be submitted through the Frontiers in Pharmacology pathway only.