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Call for papers - Tumor immune contexture in cancer progression and treatment

Guest Editor:
Noel De Miranda: Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands

Submission Status: Open   |   Submission Deadline: 31 December 2024


Genome Medicine is calling for submissions to our Collection on the tumor immune contexture in cancer progression and treatment. This Collection seeks to capture recent insights in characterizing and mapping the tumor immune contexture, dissecting response to immunotherapy, exploring anti-tumor immune responses, and uncovering parameters associated with patient outcomes, highlighting the clinical applications of these advances.

About the collection

Genome Medicine is calling for submissions to a new Collection on the tumor immune contexture. 

The complex interplay between tumor cells and the immune system during cancer initiation, development, growth, and metastasis has been elucidated in recent years culminating in the concept of the tumor immune contexture, described as the spatial organization and density of immune cell types within the microenvironment which can be associated with patient prognosis and clinical outcome. Progress in the characterization of the tumor immune contexture has been accelerated by new techniques including single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics which have unraveled the roles of different immune cell-types in cancer progression. In parallel, the development of immunotherapies targeting and manipulating the immune system to treat cancer such as immune checkpoint therapy, chimeric monoclonal antibodies, CAR T cells, oncolytic viruses, and cancer vaccines have revolutionized precision medicine. In the clinic, advances have been made in combining these immunotherapies with classical cancer therapy to treat patients of all cancer types, holding great promise for the future.

To capture advances in this growing area, Genome Medicine is pleased to announce a call for papers for our upcoming Collection on “Tumor immune contexture in cancer progression and treatment” guest edited by Noel De Miranda of Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands. This Collection seeks to capture recent insights in characterizing and mapping the tumor immune contexture, dissecting response to immunotherapy, exploring anti-tumor immune responses, and uncovering parameters of the tumor immune contexture associated with patient outcomes, highlighting the clinical applications of these advances.

We are now inviting the submission of Research, Method, Software, Database and Guideline manuscripts of outstanding interest covering the breadth of the immune contexture from biological characterization to clinical applications, including but not limited to the following topics: 

•  Immune profiling and immunophenotypes
•  Single-cell and multi-omic profiling 
•  Immune evasion
•  Cancer stemness
•  Immunity and metabolism
•  T cell exhaustion
•  Metastasis
•  Microbiome studies
•  Immunoediting
•  Neoantigens and immune response 
•  Hot and cold tumors
•  Immunotherapy and combination therapy
•  Therapy response, resistance, and residual disease
•  Precision medicine and therapeutics 
•  Clinical trials
•  CAR T cell therapy
•  Longitudinal monitoring 
•  Liquid biopsies 
•  Interpretable machine learning 
•  Prognosis and outcome prediction

If you would like to enquire about the suitability of a manuscript for consideration in this Collection, please email editorial@genomemedicine.com.

Image credit: Steve Gschmeissner / Science Photo Library

Meet the Guest Editors

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Noel De Miranda: Leiden University Medical Centre, the Netherlands

Noel de Miranda is the Principal Investigator of the Cancer Immunogenomics group and Associate Professor at the department of Pathology of the Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. Dr. de Miranda’s group combines the use of high-end genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic (single cell and spatial) technologies for the study of cancer genetics and immunology. The main aim of the group is to support the development of novel therapies to enrich the immunotherapy toolbox for the treatment of advanced cancers. The group’s activities are subdivided into two major pillars: 1) the discovery of immunotherapeutic targets in cancer patients that are not amenable to state-of-the-art immunotherapies and 2) the identification of (innate) immune cell subsets with immunotherapeutic potential.

  1. Oesophageal adenocarcinoma (OAC) is a highly heterogeneous cancer with poor survival. Standard curative treatment is chemotherapy with or without radiotherapy followed by oesophagectomy. Genomic heterogeneity ...

    Authors: Sandra Brosda, Lauren G. Aoude, Vanessa F. Bonazzi, Kalpana Patel, James M. Lonie, Clemence J. Belle, Felicity Newell, Lambros T. Koufariotis, Venkateswar Addala, Marjan M. Naeini, John V. Pearson, Lutz Krause, Nicola Waddell and Andrew P. Barbour
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:90
    Content type: Research Published on:

  2. Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs) are common gland neoplasms demonstrating distinctive transcription factors. Although the role of immune cells in PitNETs has been widely recognized, the precise immuno...

    Authors: Shaojian Lin, Yuting Dai, Changxi Han, Tianyi Han, Linfeng Zhao, Renyan Wu, Jianyue Liu, Bo Zhang, Ning Huang, Yanting Liu, Shujing Lai, Jintong Shi, Yu Wang, Meiqing Lou, Jing Xie, Yijun Cheng…
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:60
    Content type: Research Published on:

  3. A major contributing factor to glioblastoma (GBM) development and progression is its ability to evade the immune system by creating an immune-suppressive environment, where GBM-associated myeloid cells, includ...

    Authors: Yahaya A. Yabo, Pilar M. Moreno-Sanchez, Yolanda Pires-Afonso, Tony Kaoma, Bakhtiyor Nosirov, Andrea Scafidi, Luca Ermini, Anuja Lipsa, Anaïs Oudin, Dimitrios Kyriakis, Kamil Grzyb, Suresh K. Poovathingal, Aurélie Poli, Arnaud Muller, Reka Toth, Barbara Klink…
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:51
    Content type: Research Published on:

  4. The efficacy of neoadjuvant chemo-immunotherapy (NAT) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is challenged by the intricate interplay within the tumor microenvironment (TME). Unveiling the immune landsca...

    Authors: Gang Ji, Qi Yang, Song Wang, Xiaolong Yan, Qiuxiang Ou, Li Gong, Jinbo Zhao, Yongan Zhou, Feng Tian, Jie Lei, Xiaorong Mu, Jian Wang, Tao Wang, Xiaoping Wang, Jianyong Sun, Jipeng Zhang…
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:49
    Content type: Research Published on:

  5. Aberrant DNA methylation is a major characteristic of cancer genomes. It remains unclear which biological processes determine epigenetic reprogramming and how these processes influence the variants in the canc...

    Authors: Qingqing Qin, Ying Zhou, Jintao Guo, Qinwei Chen, Weiwei Tang, Yuchen Li, Jun You and Qiyuan Li
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:47
    Content type: Research Published on:

  6. Despite advancements in the successful use of immunotherapy in treating a variety of solid tumors, applications in treating brain tumors have lagged considerably. This is due, at least in part, to the lack of ...

    Authors: Vrunda Trivedi, Changlin Yang, Kelena Klippel, Oleg Yegorov, Christina von Roemeling, Lan Hoang-Minh, Graeme Fenton, Elizabeth Ogando-Rivas, Paul Castillo, Ginger Moore, Kaytora Long-James, Kyle Dyson, Bently Doonan, Catherine Flores and Duane A. Mitchell
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2024 16:17
    Content type: Research Published on:

  7. Understanding the mechanistic effects of novel immunotherapy agents is critical to improving their successful clinical translation. These effects need to be studied in preclinical models that maintain the hete...

    Authors: Anuja Sathe, Carlos Ayala, Xiangqi Bai, Susan M. Grimes, Byrne Lee, Cindy Kin, Andrew Shelton, George Poultsides and Hanlee P. Ji
    Citation: Genome Medicine 2023 15:100
    Content type: Research Published on:

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of Research, Method, Software, Database, and Guideline manuscripts. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. 

Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Snapp. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Tumor immune contexture in cancer progression and treatment" from the dropdown menu.  

You are welcome to enquire about the suitability of your manuscript by emailing our editorial office at editorial@genomemedicine.com.

All articles submitted to Collections are peer reviewed in line with the journal’s standard peer review policy and are subject to all of the journal’s standard editorial and publishing policies. This includes the journal’s policy on competing interests. 

The Guest Editors have no competing interests with the submissions which they handle through the peer review process. The peer review of any submissions for which the Guest Editors have competing interests is handled by another Editor or Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.