About this Research Topic
April is the Testicular Cancer Awareness Month and at Frontiers in Oncology we want to highlight the recent discoveries in the field and raise awareness of the importance of early diagnosis, multidisciplinary management, and technological innovation support.
Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common solid malignancy in young adult men, most often between the ages of 15 and 45, and accounts for approximately 1% of all cancers in men worldwide. Testicular tumors originate when gonocytes fail to differentiate into spermatogonias, generating highly pluripotent germ cell tumors (GCTs). Testicular cancers are classified according to the GCTs histological composition, germ cell lineage, and patient’s age (i.e., pediatric, adolescent, or adult). Although TCs are highly treatable, mainly through surgery and chemotherapy, 30% of patients are diagnosed with metastatic disease. Five-year survival values for metastatic TC are currently about 95%, primarily owing to multidisciplinary treatment approaches and GCTs’ highly sensitive to systemic therapy. Still, developing new strategies to treat TCs that combine different approaches is crucial, allowing a more targeted therapy management that improves clinical outcomes and overall cancer survival with lower incidence of side effects.
Currently, chemotherapy medication has been shown to be an excellent option to treat testicular tumors, mainly due to insufficient DNA repair in response to drug-induced DNA damage and hypersensitive apoptotic response. Still, TCs can be resistant to chemotherapy. Several strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance have shown pre-clinical efficacy, including therapies combining different inhibitors. These chemotherapy drugs gain efficacy when combined with accurate testicular GCT imaging by improving treatment decision guidance. PET using a fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) tracer (FDG-PET) was introduced to predict vital seminoma after chemotherapy, while FDG-PET-computerized tomography (CT) and nanoparticle-enhanced MRI have been investigated to identify borderline enlarged lymph nodes. Moreover, new imaging modalities like diffusion-weighted MRI and radiomics are currently under investigation for assessing post-chemotherapeutic residual masses. Still, the treatment of TC patients who are refractory to chemotherapy remains to be improved.
In this Research Topic, we expect to promote the scientific efforts that intend to improve the testicular GCT patient outcome by developing new target chemotherapy drugs and refining the tumor imaging, which is of high relevance for guiding treatment decisions as well as reducing the associated treatment burdens and oncological outcomes. We welcome Original Research, Perspectives, Reviews, Methods, Mini Reviews, Opinions, Systematic Reviews, Clinical Trials, and Case Reports that add knowledge to TC-personalized therapy management, either by combined or individual therapy approaches.
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
Testicular cancer (TC) is the most common solid malignancy in young adult men, most often between the ages of 15 and 45, and accounts for approximately 1% of all cancers in men worldwide. Testicular tumors originate when gonocytes fail to differentiate into spermatogonias, generating highly pluripotent germ cell tumors (GCTs). Testicular cancers are classified according to the GCTs histological composition, germ cell lineage, and patient’s age (i.e., pediatric, adolescent, or adult). Although TCs are highly treatable, mainly through surgery and chemotherapy, 30% of patients are diagnosed with metastatic disease. Five-year survival values for metastatic TC are currently about 95%, primarily owing to multidisciplinary treatment approaches and GCTs’ highly sensitive to systemic therapy. Still, developing new strategies to treat TCs that combine different approaches is crucial, allowing a more targeted therapy management that improves clinical outcomes and overall cancer survival with lower incidence of side effects.
Currently, chemotherapy medication has been shown to be an excellent option to treat testicular tumors, mainly due to insufficient DNA repair in response to drug-induced DNA damage and hypersensitive apoptotic response. Still, TCs can be resistant to chemotherapy. Several strategies to overcome chemotherapy resistance have shown pre-clinical efficacy, including therapies combining different inhibitors. These chemotherapy drugs gain efficacy when combined with accurate testicular GCT imaging by improving treatment decision guidance. PET using a fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) tracer (FDG-PET) was introduced to predict vital seminoma after chemotherapy, while FDG-PET-computerized tomography (CT) and nanoparticle-enhanced MRI have been investigated to identify borderline enlarged lymph nodes. Moreover, new imaging modalities like diffusion-weighted MRI and radiomics are currently under investigation for assessing post-chemotherapeutic residual masses. Still, the treatment of TC patients who are refractory to chemotherapy remains to be improved.
In this Research Topic, we expect to promote the scientific efforts that intend to improve the testicular GCT patient outcome by developing new target chemotherapy drugs and refining the tumor imaging, which is of high relevance for guiding treatment decisions as well as reducing the associated treatment burdens and oncological outcomes. We welcome Original Research, Perspectives, Reviews, Methods, Mini Reviews, Opinions, Systematic Reviews, Clinical Trials, and Case Reports that add knowledge to TC-personalized therapy management, either by combined or individual therapy approaches.
Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.
Keywords: testicular germ cell tumors (TGCTs), personalized cancer therapy, testicular cancer imaging, targeted chemotherapy, patient outcome, refractory 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.
