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Fibrosis and Cancer Intersection

Guest Editors:

Monica Pernia Marin, MD, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, United States of America
Professor Mary Salvatore, MD, MBA, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, United States of America

This collection is no longer accepting submissions.


The intersection of fibrosis and cancer will be a collection of scientific articles aiming to clarify the correlation between tissue fibrosis and cancer origination and progression. The scope of this collection should cover cancers derived in fibrosis throughout the body. In addition, we look forward to articles that consider novel targeted treatments and optimization of early diagnosis with state-of-the-art imaging techniques.

Image credit: © Kedersha / Ag.Focus / science photo library

  1. The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a key role in lung cancer initiation, proliferation, invasion, and metastasis. Artificial intelligence (AI) methods could potentially accelerate TME analysis. The aims of...

    Authors: Anjali Saqi, Yucheng Liu, Michelle Garlin Politis, Mary Salvatore and Sachin Jambawalikar
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:640
  2. Fibrosis is a pathological process involving the abnormal deposition of connective tissue, resulting from improper tissue repair in response to sustained injury caused by hypoxia, infection, or physical damage...

    Authors: Sofia Maria Tarchi, Mary Salvatore, Philip Lichtenstein, Thillai Sekar, Kathleen Capaccione, Lyndon Luk, Hiram Shaish, Jasnit Makkar, Elise Desperito, Jay Leb, Benjamin Navot, Jonathan Goldstein, Sherelle Laifer, Volkan Beylergil, Hong Ma, Sachin Jambawalikar…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:616
  3. Sustained injury from factors such as hypoxia, infection, or physical damage may provoke improper tissue repair and the anomalous deposition of connective tissue that causes fibrosis. This phenomenon may take ...

    Authors: Sofia Maria Tarchi, Mary Salvatore, Philip Lichtenstein, Thillai Sekar, Kathleen Capaccione, Lyndon Luk, Hiram Shaish, Jasnit Makkar, Elise Desperito, Jay Leb, Benjamin Navot, Jonathan Goldstein, Sherelle Laifer, Volkan Beylergil, Hong Ma, Sachin Jambawalikar…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:609
  4. Loss of AZGP1 expression is a biomarker associated with progression to castration resistance, development of metastasis, and poor disease-specific survival in prostate cancer. However, high expression of AZGP1...

    Authors: Ru M. Wen, Zhengyuan Qiu, G. Edward W. Marti, Eric E. Peterson, Fernando Jose Garcia Marques, Abel Bermudez, Yi Wei, Rosalie Nolley, Nathan Lam, Alex LaPat Polasko, Chun-Lung Chiu, Dalin Zhang, Sanghee Cho, Grigorios Marios Karageorgos, Elizabeth McDonough, Chrystal Chadwick…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:383
  5. Tumors are highly complex and heterogenous ecosystems where malignant cells interact with healthy cells and the surrounding extracellular matrix (ECM). Solid tumors contain large ECM deposits that can constitu...

    Authors: Rowie Borst, Linde Meyaard and M. Ines Pascoal Ramos
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:382
  6. Cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), an extracellular matrix glycoprotein, is vital in preserving cartilage integrity. Further, its overexpression is associated with the aggressiveness of several types ...

    Authors: Gilar Gorji-Bahri, B. Madhu Krishna, Catharina Hagerling, Akira Orimo, Karin Jirström, Konstantinos S. Papadakos and Anna M. Blom
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:351
  7. This study aimed to assess the functions of cell division cycle protein 45 (CDC45) in Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cancer and its effects on stemness and metastasis.

    Authors: Yafeng Liu, Tao Han, Zhi Xu, Jing Wu, Jiawei Zhou, Jianqiang Guo, Rui Miao, Yingru Xing, Deyong Ge, Ying Bai and Dong Hu
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:335
  8. Radiotherapy can induce tumor cell autophagy, which might impair the antitumoral effect. This study aims to investigate the effect of autophagy inhibition on the targeted radionuclide therapy (TRT) efficacy of 13...

    Authors: Xingyu Liu, Danni Li, Tianbao Ma, Xiu Luo, Ye Peng, Tao Wang, Changjing Zuo and Jianming Cai
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:156
  9. Esophageal strictures significantly impair patient quality of life and present a therapeutic challenge, particularly due to the high recurrence post-ESD/EMR. Current treatments manage symptoms rather than addr...

    Authors: Fang Yang, Yiwei Hu, Zewen Shi, Mujie Liu, Kefeng Hu, Guoliang Ye, Qian Pang, Ruixia Hou, Keqi Tang and Yabin Zhu
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:123
  10. Evaluate the behavior of lung nodules occurring in areas of pulmonary fibrosis and compare them to pulmonary nodules occurring in the non-fibrotic lung parenchyma.

    Authors: Mary M. Salvatore, Yucheng Liu, Boyu Peng, Hao Yun Hsu, Anjali Saqi, Wei-Yann Tsai, Cheng-Shiun Leu and Sachin Jambawalikar
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:67
  11. Chest Computed tomography (CT) scans detect lung nodules and assess pulmonary fibrosis. While pulmonary fibrosis indicates increased lung cancer risk, current clinical practice characterizes nodule risk of mal...

    Authors: Yucheng Liu, Hao Yun Hsu, Tiffany Lin, Boyu Peng, Anjali Saqi, Mary M. Salvatore and Sachin Jambawalikar
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:51
  12. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are the most abundant stromal cell population in breast tumors. A functionally diverse population of CAFs increases the dynamic complexity of the tumor microenvironment (TM...

    Authors: Wenfeng Zhang, Jia Wang, Cun Liu, Ye Li, Changgang Sun, Jibiao Wu and Qibiao Wu
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2023 21:827
  13. Cancer remains the leading cause of death around the world. In cancer treatment, over 50% of cancer patients receive radiotherapy alone or in multimodal combinations with other therapies. One of the adverse co...

    Authors: Zuxiang Yu, Chaoyu Xu, Bin Song, Shihao Zhang, Chong Chen, Changlong Li and Shuyu Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2023 21:708

Meet the Guest Editors

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Monica Pernia Marin, MD, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, United States of America

Monica Pernia Marin, MD, is a triple board-certified physician in the fields of internal medicine, geriatrics, and hospice and palliative medicine. She has a passion for education and cancer care in older adults. Her research interests include fibrosis, aging, cancer biology, and cancer care in the geriatric population.


Professor Mary Salvatore, MD, MBA, Columbia University Irving Medical Center, United States of America

Mary Salvatore, MD, MBA, is an associate professor of radiology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center in New York City. She is an expert in thoracic radiology with focus on lung fibrosis and other interstitial lung diseases. She has a passion for research and education with many publications in renowned medical journals. Her research focuses on the improvement of early diagnosis of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and other diseases of the thorax using CT scan. She believes that inflammation, fibrosis, and cancer are interrelated and cause most diseases in the body.

About the Collection

The Journal of Translational Medicine is calling for submissions to our Collection on Fibrosis and Cancer Intersection.

The intersection of fibrosis and cancer will be a collection of scientific articles aiming to clarify the correlation between tissue fibrosis and cancer origination and progression. This idea is supported by an increasing body of scientific work exploring the relationship between cancer initiation and proliferation with the activity of fibroblasts, collagen production and distribution in the extracellular space, as well as signaling pathways, molecules, and other collagen-related factors. The interest in this topic has increased substantially in recent decades since the incidence of cancer developing in fibrotic organs like the liver and the lung has also augmented. For instance, the life expectancy in patients with pulmonary fibrosis have increased thanks in part to the success of the relatively new anti-fibrotic agents raising the question of how much tissue fibrosis is involved in cancer cell proliferation and longevity. Several studies have pointed out that the presence of a hypoxic environment produced by dense deposition of collagen fibers plays a role in tumor proliferation and metastasis. 

Recent investigations have explored the interaction of specific types of collagen fibers in the differentiation and function of immune cells and their anti-tumoral responses. Similarly, some authors have suggested that certain cancer mutations or oncogenes may play a role in the activation and function of fibroblasts leading to modifications in the extracellular matrix that are favorable for cancer cells to grow and metastasize.

A scientific collection that can gather the work of researchers who are focused on increasing the understanding of the relationship between fibrosis and cancer development would be of great benefit for the medical scientific community since this knowledge could accelerate the development of new therapies to treat cancer while increasing the hostility of the cancer cells’ microenvironment by preventing or interfering with collagen deposition. This evidence could explain the development of tumoral resistance to immune defenses and existing or emergent anti-cancer therapies.

We would like the scope of this collection to cover cancers derived in fibrosis throughout the body. In addition, we look forward to articles that consider novel targeted treatments and optimization of early diagnosis with state-of-the-art imaging techniques.

Submission Guidelines

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This Collection welcomes submission of original research articles as well as review articles. Before submitting your manuscript, please ensure you have read our submission guidelines. Articles for this Collection should be submitted via our submission system, Editorial Manager. During the submission process you will be asked whether you are submitting to a Collection, please select "Fibrosis and Cancer Intersection" from the dropdown menu.

Articles will undergo the journal’s standard peer-review process and are subject to all of the journal’s standard policies. Articles will be added to the Collection as they are published.

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 Editorial Board Member who has no competing interests.