Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue will feature a series of contributions addressing the role of signaling pathways in cancer. Signaling pathways in cancer cells are recognized for their vital role in controlling important cellular processes including cell cycle progression, apoptosis, DNA repair, cell metabolism, and angiogenesis. Thus, these biological mechanisms are intricately linked to cancer initiation, growth, and metastatic tumor behavior. Several oncogenes (e.g., MYC, RAS, BRAF and KIT) and tumor suppressor genes (e.g., TP53, BRCA1 and PTEN) are known to be commonly mutated in cancer, and drive key molecular networks required for either cancer propagation or suppression. With the advent of comprehensive omic approaches, our understanding of the molecular networks deregulated in cancer has grown considerably over the last few years. However, these discoveries have made it abundantly clear how heterogenous these networks are between different cancer types, between individuals with the same cancer type, between different tumors within the same patient following cancer dissemination, and even within the same tumor when different regions are sampled. More recently, the heterogeneity and complexity of cancer has been further unraveled using single cell techniques as these approaches afford crucial insight into the dysfunction of molecular networks in distinct cell types within a tumor. Increasing our understanding of such critical networks has great promise in highlighting novel therapeutic strategies for cancer patients, especially for those with advanced disease.

In this Special Issue, we welcome original research and review articles that explore signaling pathways that are disrupted in cancer, and in particular, metastatic disease. We invite submissions that provide novel insight into biomarkers and those that advance our understanding of the biological and molecular consequences of these alterations.

Dr. Kelly Avery-Kiejda and Dr. Kira Groen

Guest Editors