The Role of Peptides and Peptide Syntheses in Cancer Therapy

Dear Colleagues, 

Cancer is currently the second leading cause of death, and the number of cases is only predicted to grow, with 28.4 million new cases anticipated by 2040. Employing tumor-specific peptides is a very promising approach that can be used as a targeting, diagnostic or imaging tool. Hormone peptides—GnRH and somatostatin derivatives—are suitable for hormone therapy and can also be applied in cancer imaging as diagnostics. An increasing number isolated and synthetic peptides have demonstrated not only antimicrobial but also antitumor activity, providing potential new anticancer agents. Peptides can be used as homing moieties in peptide–drug conjugates (PDCs) to increase the selectivity of clinically applied and novel drugs to decrease side effects, and PDCs might have several advantages over antibody–drug conjugates (ADCs). Efficient homing peptides are suitable for specific targeting of nanocarriers or radiotracers to tumor tissues. To test the new constructs on tissue, organ and barrier mimicking models are also important to optimize new therapeutics before in vivo experiments.

Authors are invited to submit original research and review articles on application of peptides in tumor therapy, mainly on the following topics:    

• Peptides with antitumor activity and their interactions with the cell cycle and biological pathways;
• Identification of target proteins on the tumor cell surface and peptides that recognize them;
• Development of peptide-based conjugates for different types of tumors, including imagine and therapy; 
• Regulation of key tumor physiology processes, including migration, invasiveness, autophagy, and angiogenesis by peptides and peptide-based conjugates;
• Development of peptide–drug conjugates for stem-like cancer cells.

Prof. Dr. Gábor Mező
Dr. Szilvia Bősze
Guest Editors

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• anticancer peptides
• homing peptides
• linker systems
• peptide–drug conjugates
• target cells including cancer stem cells
• targeted nanocarriers
• organ, tissue, and barrier mimicking models
• in vivo tumor models