Sarcoma Web Focus
Sarcomas represent one of the most heterogeneous and diverse group of tumors encountered in the clinic, and grouping them into specific entities has proved problematic. Because of the scarcity of each sarcoma subtype, there is a lack of large clinical trials which are traditionally used to guide better management strategies in the clinic.
Understanding the molecular mechanisms that underpin sarcoma biology is thus critical, with the hope that we can perturb even if we cannot disrupt and drug the individual aberrant driver mutations or fusion proteins themselves, we can target the pathways they activate. Indeed genetic studies have led to a better understanding of underlying chromosomal translocations in sarcoma but with the exception of gastrointestinal stromal tumors and Kaposi sarcoma, therapeutic options are limited. As sarcomas are typically somatic diseases, tumorigenesis depends on permissive microenvironments and there are several models that faithfully recapitulate the histopathologic, immunohistochemical and transcriptional profile of human sarcomas.
We are pleased to present a collection of papers on sarcoma, which we thought reflected some of the most notable advances in sarcoma biology in the last few years. The articles serve as a building block for future work and we are delighted to share them with you.
George Miller & Justin Stebbing
