Cancer immunotherapy – beyond checkpoint blockade

延长至2023.7.14 (周五)

T-cell checkpoint inhibitors have dramatically changed cancer treatment, having improved lifespan and even cured many people with cancer. While checkpoint inhibitors, such as anti-CTLA4 and anti-PD-1, mainly boost CD8+ T cell responses, several targets have been identified on other immune cell populations that may provide additional benefits to cancer patients. Both myeloid cells and other lymphocytes can be manipulated in pre-clinical models to slow cancer progression. The goal of this special issue is to highlight recent advances in immunotherapy targets that go beyond CD8+ T cells.

• Inhibiting Tregs in cancer

• Macrophage-associated targets in cancer

• Boosting DC function in cancer

• NK cells and cancer

Seth Coffelt

University of Glasgow, United Kingdom

Drugging the undruggable - new approaches to anti-cancer drug development

延长至2023.7.14 (周五)

Recent cancer therapies have improved patient outcomes for several cancer types. However, the majority of the targets in the human proteome remain undruggable which include oncoproteins, namely transcriptions factors such as MYC and TP53, GTPases such as RAS, and almost the entire family of E3 ligases. Membrane proteins and in particular transporters are potentially druggable, yet there is limited success in targeting them due to the difficulty in high-resolution structural analysis by conventional techniques NMR and X-ray crystallography to enable rational design. Cryo-EM has emerged as a remarkable tool to overcome some of these challenges and to provide detailed structural insights for such target proteins, which further helps in understanding the biochemical and biological properties of such targets. This special issue will detail new approaches to target proteins in cancer, previously deemed undruggable, raising the exciting possibility of novel therapeutics.

This special issue aims to highlight different areas which have experienced a renaissance thanks to cryo-EM.

• Elucidating mechanisms of chromatin regulators

• Elucidating mechanism of membrane proteins including kinases and transporters

• Elucidating mechanisms of ATPase motors

Tudor Moldoveanu

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, United States