Molecular and Cellular Mechanisms of Human Astrocytoma Progression: Advances in Knowledge to Reach Therapeutic Horizons

Abstract

Human astrocytic tumors are primary central nervous system (CNS) tumors that arise either from astrocytes or from precursor cells. A growing number of epidemiological and incidence studies in different countries underlined that, in addition to increasing economic costs for health systems, these cancers are still representing one of the main hurdles in developing a successful therapeutic goal for patients. On the other hand, new-omics technologies are offering customized instruments and more and more advantageous results toward personalized medicine approaches, underlining the concept that each tumor mass undergoes a peculiar transformation process under the control of specific genes' and proteins' functional signatures. The main aim of this Special Issue was to collect novel contributions in the wide field of human tumor astrocytic basic and translational research, to suggest further potential therapeutic targets/strategies that might interfere, possibly at the earliest stage of transformation, with the tumor progression, and to increase the molecular-based arsenal to counteract the prognostic poverty of high-grade astrocytic tumors.

Keywords: Glioblastoma multiforme; astrocytic tumor; gene-interfering; gene-therapy; glioma; programmed cell death.