Endometrial Carcinoma: Current Insights and Future Perspectives
A special issue of International Journal of Molecular Sciences (ISSN 1422-0067). This special issue belongs to the section "Molecular Oncology".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 December 2023) | Viewed by 4776
Special Issue Editors
Interests: estrogen receptors; ER and GPER-1 signaling; breast and ovarian cancer; non-coding RNAs
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Interests: estrogen receptors; endometrial cancer; ovarian cancer; breast cancer; sarcomas; PCOS; endometriosis; non-coding RNAs
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Endometrial cancer (EC) is the most common cancer of the female reproductive tract in developed countries. Its incidence is continuously rising, along with its death rate, as the population is aging, the obesity rates are increasing, and the prognosis of certain types of EC, mainly non-endometrioid EC, remains debatable. Wide-scale genome studies have contributed to a better understanding of the carcinogenesis of uterine tumors and the integration of molecular biomarkers into international risk stratification systems. The Cancer Genome Atlas publication first described the genomic landscape of endometrial cancer and characterized these cancers into four molecular subtypes with different prognoses. The Proactive Molecular Classifier for Endometrial Cancer was developed to more easily classify endometrial cancers into four molecular subtypes: POLE, mismatch repair deficient, p53 abnormal, and no specific molecular profile. Beyond these four subtypes, other molecular biomarkers influence the clinical behavior and response to targeted therapies and include beta-catenin, Her2 amplification, PI3K/mTOR/AKT alterations, L1CAM, hormone receptor expression, tumor mutational burden, and ARID1A. There are numerous clinical trials exploring treatment escalation and de-escalation within the four molecular subtypes as well as matching targeted therapies to specific mutational or biomarker profiles. All endometrial cancers should undergo basic molecular classification that includes assessment of mismatch repair status. Recently, innovative targeted therapeutic strategies have been developed, such as antibodies against immune checkpoint inhibitor PD-1 for tumors with DNA polymerase epsilon (POLE) missense mutations defining the important subtype of POLE‐ultramutated tumors within the novel molecular classification of endometrial carcinoma (EC) or tumors with microsatellite instability (MSI). Whereas classical targeted therapy of EC based on endocrine therapy directed against estrogen signaling showed moderate response rates, further targeted therapy approaches, such as the use of trastuzumab alone or in combination with chemotherapy for HER2-positive EC patients, or targeting the PI3K-AKT-mTOR pathway by everolimus alone or in combination with letrozole, novel targeted therapeutics for ARID1A mutated tumors such as ATR inhibitor ceralasertib alone or in combination with PARP inhibitor olaparib are being or have been tested with, to some extent, promising results. The future perspectives of targeted EC therapy are particularly determined by the rapid development of multi-omics, which opens a wide field of molecules that could serve as novel therapeutic targets, including non-coding RNAs such as miRNAs and long non-coding RNAs as important regulators of gene expression.
For this Special Issue, we welcome the submission of original reports or comprehensive review articles addressing the current state of targeted therapy of EC or future perspectives emerging from the identification of promising novel targets for EC therapy.
Prof. Dr. Oliver Treeck
Dr. Maciej Iek Skrzypczak
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- endometrial cancer
- targeted therapy
- novel therapy targets
- drugs for targeted therapy
- clinical study
- in vivo study
