Liver Metastasis

Dear Colleagues,

Metastasis is the main driver of mortality in cancer patients, and the liver is the most common site of metastasis for the majority of solid malignancies. Thus, an effective therapeutic strategy for liver metastasis will likely lead to improved outcomes of stage IV cancer patients and should be prioritized in oncology. As the largest internal organ in the body, the liver maintains essential metabolic, hematopoietic, and immunologic functions that impact human development and physiology. Despite being an area of active research, however, the biological underpinning of the liver’s permissive response to tumor invasion and its subsequent consequences to the host remain poorly understood. An emerging observation in the era of modern cancer immunotherapy is that liver metastasis appears to have a potent deleterious effect on antitumor immunity, with apparent hepatic and systemic changes in immune cell subsets resulting from liver tumor involvement. In melanoma, lung, and urinary cancers, checkpoint inhibitors (CPIs) reverse T cell dysfunction in the tumor microenvironment and facilitate tumor eradication. In the setting of liver metastasis, this process appears inhibited and they are associated with a significantly lower rate of response. Patients who have disease progression despite treatment have a dismal survival rate and we currently lack salvage strategies for CPI refractory disease. Understanding the mechanism of resistance and systemic impact of liver metastasis will enable more effective treatments of this problem. This special issue welcomes articles addressing the cellular and molecular mechanisms driving liver metastasis associated cancer immunotherapy resistance as well as strategies to overcome them.

Dr. James C. Lee and Prof. Dr. Adil Daud

Guest Editors

Manuscripts should be submitted via our online editorial system at https://imr.propub.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to start your submission. Manuscripts can be submitted now or up until the deadline. All papers will go through peer-review process. Accepted papers will be published in the journal (as soon as accepted) and meanwhile listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, reviews as well as short communications are preferred. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office to announce on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts will be thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. Please visit the Instruction for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) in this open access journal is 2500 USD. Submitted manuscripts should be well formatted in good English.