About this Research Topic
Traditional oncological studies have provided valuable insights, but they often try to oversimply the role of these actors into the TME offering a schematic definition of pro-tumor and anti-tumor activities, failing to capture the entire complexity of the miniaturized tumor ecosystem evolution. However, novel and intriguing discoveries sometimes turn the tide and offer novel perspective. Also, deeper transcriptomic resolution allows to identify previously unknown cell sub-lineage (e.g., tens of T cell subfamilies) with both diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic interest. The old perspective of ideally categorizable as pro- or anti-tumor cancer associated cells (Cancer Associated Fibroblast CAF, Tumor Infiltrating Lymphocytes TILs, Tumor Associated Macophages TAMs) is now outdated. Moreover, emerging therapeutic strategies can reprogram such amenable deleterious phenotypes (e.g., M2 to M1 macrophages), exploit cancer and non-cancer cells as cell factories to produce soluble molecules (e.g., cytokines) to reshape the immune hierarchy or act as cancer gene therapeutic.
Therefore, the goal of this research topic is to promote comprehensive studies about rare cancers by deciphering the influence of cancer cells, TME and their interactions on early drug and immunotherapy developments. We encourage studies deciphering novel characteristic of cellular and non-cellular components of TME with therapeutic application and/or relevance (e.g., resistance to standard of care). We are open to studies generating innovative 3D cancer model or application for in vitro preclinical studies. We welcome the submission of Original Research, Brief research report, Review, Mini Review and Perspective covering, but not limited to, the following sub-topics:
• Advances in multi-omics integrative analysis to characterize TME including spatial transcriptomic, single-cell analysis for diagnostic, prognosis definition and therapeutic purpose
• Novel therapeutics or combination treatment targeting cancer and non-cancer cells into the tumor mass
• Cancer gene therapy to reshape TME
Manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by robust and relevant validation (clinical cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this topic.
Keywords: rare cancers, tumor microenvironment, cancer associated fibroblast, tumor associated macrophages, tumor infiltrating lymphocytes, cancer gene therapy, cancer immunology, local to systemic immune response
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.