Cancer Management and Research

Dove Medical Press is pleased to invite you to submit your research to an upcoming Article Collection on "Establishing New Standards in Neuroendocrine Tumors: Raising the Bar to Set New Benchmarks", organized by Guest Advisor Dr. Giuseppe Lamberti in Cancer Management and Research.

Neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) are considered rare diseases because of their low incidence and comprise a heterogeneous group of tumors that span from well-differentiated low-grade relatively indolent tumors (NETs) to poorly-differentiated high-grade aggressive ones (NEC). Nevertheless, NENs are highly prevalent in the general population and their incidence has been constantly rising in the last decades. Furthermore, NENs' biological and clinical heterogeneity poses unique challenges in the management of patients with NEN.

Therapeutic options for these patients are limited, reflecting the poor insight that we yet have about the biology of this group of tumors, as well as their rarity, which makes research efforts challenging. The findings that NETs commonly express somatostatin receptors and the key role of the mTOR pathway has prompted somatostatin analogues (with or without an associated radionuclide) and everolimus to be established therapeutic options in a wide array of NENs. However, further therapeutic options in patients with NET are critical to extend survival. When it comes to NECs, no shared standard is available and most of the therapeutic management is extrapolated from small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) treatment. Despite the newly discovered four molecular subtypes on SCLC, which has fostered new intriguing research scenarios in high-grade NEC, our understanding of this tumor is very limited. Improving the clinical and biological understanding of NENs is crucial to improve patients’ management and consequently their outcomes, as well as to identify new potential treatment strategies, which are a highly unmet need in these patients.

The aim of this special issue is to collect and highlight recent advances in the context of clinical management and biology understanding for NENs. 

The deadline for submissions is 31 July 2023.

Please submit your manuscript on our website, quoting the promo code IYRMO to indicate that your submission is for consideration in this Article Collection.

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Dove Medical Press is pleased to invite you to submit your research to an upcoming Article Collection on "The Cancer Treatment Revolution and the Threat to Equitable Global Medicines Access" in Cancer Management and Research.

There has been an unparalleled advancement in cancer therapeutics development, including personalized medicine, that has led to a global decline in cancer mortality across different cancer types, mostly in high income countries. Notably, more than 300 new anti-cancer drugs have been approved in the last decade alone. Furthermore, spending on cancer medicines exceeded $180 billion globally in 2021 with the vast majority focused in the major developed markets. As thrilling as this innovative therapeutic landscape is, it remains a challenge to ensure that all patients who need these cancer therapeutics can access them at the point of care. Without a matched equity plan, the pace of rapid therapeutic development will widen the already existent disparities in cancer medicines access. Enhancing universal access to new cancer medicines as they reach the market will be needed to ensure a more equitable and broader impact of innovations in cancer treatment.

There is a moral obligation to ensure equitable access to cancer therapeutics amidst this rapidly changing landscape. There is unequivocable data on racial and ethnic disparities in cancer clinical trial enrolment and a near absence of therapeutic trials in many low- and middle- income countries. In addition to not being included in the trials that inform the diagnostic and treatment innovations, there are also disparities in access to cancer therapeutics among racial and ethnic minority community practices in under-resourced regions within high income countries and between diverse world income regions. The next frontier in this rapidly advancing landscape is designing and implementing innovative interventions and care delivery models to ensure everyone benefits from the revolution in care.

This Collection calls for papers that address inequities in access to cancer therapeutics globally and approaches for closing the equity gap.
- The first area seeks to define the cancer treatment access gap, with emphasis on communities that are understudied and areas of treatment disparities that are not as parsed out.
- The second area is operationalizing and defining what an equitable genomics and diagnostic landscape in cancer medicine looks like, and sharing insights about the future of the innovation-equity mismatch.
- The third area is highlighting different multiprong research approaches, policy initiatives and care delivery models that have demonstrated impact in improving access and are scalable to ensuring global access to oncology medicines in marginalized sub populations within high income countries and in low-resource global health settings.

The collection welcomes contributions from experts from developing countries and those with expertise in cancer medicines access, public health, healthcare policy, researchers, and industry experts. We encourage manuscripts to identify effective and feasible policies that support effective collaboration.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 1 November 2023.

Please submit your manuscript on our website, quoting the promo code FGWSF to indicate that your submission is for consideration in this Article Collection.

Guest Advisor

Yehoda M. Martei, Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania

[email protected]

Dr. Yehoda Martei is an Assistant Professor of Medicine, and the Vice Chief of Diversity, Inclusion and Health Equity in the Division of Hematology - Oncology at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn). She is also a global health scholar at the Center for Global Health and a Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at Penn. She is an Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Botswana where she conducts most of her research work related to access to WHO essential medicines for cancer treatment. Her research is also focused on implementation strategies for eliminating global disparities in breast cancer outcomes by optimizing high quality breast cancer therapy delivery in low-resource settings. She serves as a technical consultant on several working groups and organizations, including the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative, the Access to Oncology Medicines Consortium, and the Medicines Patent Pool.

View all papers in this article collection