Editorial: Tailoring immunotherapy in gastrointestinal cancer: the role of circulating factors

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Editorial on the Research TopicTailoring immunotherapy in gastrointestinal cancer: the role of circu- lating factors Gastrointestinal (GI) cancer include malignant tumors affecting digestive organs such as esophagus, stomach, liver, pancreas, small intestine, colon and rectum.Its worldwide incidence and mortality are increasing in the last years, and the overall 5-years survival rate of patients remains less than 15%.In particular, with 1.9 million new cases and almost 0.9 million deaths in 2020, colorectal cancer (CRC) accounts for approximately 10% of all cancers and cancer-related deaths (1).Thus, prevention and treatment of GI cancer represent a major public health challenge.Moreover, the heterogeneous disease setting, challenges in early diagnosis, rapid-acting cancer development, and induction of resistance to therapy ascertain the need to identify diagnostic, prognostic and predictive biomarkers with innovative approaches for GI cancer (Figure 1).Tailoring Immunotherapy in Gastrointestinal Cancer: The Role of Circulating Factors is a Research Topic on the latest advances and future challenges in the field of GI tumors, with a particular focus on circulating factors as biomarker for immunotherapies.Overall, six articles provide interesting new insights regarding the use of immunotherapies in GI tumors, and the effectiveness of potential circulating biomarkers detection for predicting cancer progression or treatment response.The genetic, molecular and cellular complexity of cancer is now included in fourteen hallmarks of cancer (2).Among them, tumor-promoting inflammation plays a critical role in supporting cancer growth at different levels, by i) providing bioactive molecules to the tumor microenvironment (TME), including growth and survival factors; ii) supporting the development of new blood vessels; iii) activating extracellular matrix-modifying enzymes; iiii) altering the immune response.In particular, the normal hematopoiesis is altered in cancer patients and favors the expansion of pro-tumoral cell components, including Frontiers in Oncology frontiersin.

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