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Molecular Pathology

Section edited by Sarah Warren

Molecular pathology has existed as a discipline for centuries, though without the modern name. Accumulating scientific insights, along with novel technological advances, are leading to greater understanding of the underlying causes of disease and novel diagnostic assays to inform clinical care. This section will serve as a platform to highlight studies that characterize human-derived biological materials, including both tissue and liquid biopsies, using molecular profiling techniques to elucidate the underlying causes of disease and impacts of therapeutic interventions. 

We expect the section to appeal to scientists working on transcriptomics, proteomics, lipidomics, glycomics and beyond. Furthermore, we anticipate most studies in this section will be preclinical or translational in nature, although we will consider works from all stages of fundamental and applied research. We also welcome manuscripts that describe new technology platforms that advance molecular profiling or novel computational approaches to support data analysis.

  1. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have revolutionized cancer treatment by significantly improving the efficacy of treatments and tolerability for patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, ev...

    Authors: Abdou Khadir Dia, Alona Kolnohuz, Sevinj Yolchuyeva, Marion Tonneau, Fabien Lamaze, Michele Orain, Andréanne Gagné, Florence Blais, François Coulombe, Julie Malo, Wiam Belkaid, Arielle Elkrief, Drew Williamson, Bertrand Routy, Philippe Joubert, Mathieu Laplante…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:510
  2. Castleman Disease (CD) is a rare lymphoproliferative disorder of uncertain etiology, primarily characterized by painless lymphadenopathy. To further understand the possible pathogenesis of the disease, we util...

    Authors: Yanfang Chen, Zhe Zhang, Ling Li, Mingzhi Zhang and Zhaoming Li
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:459
  3. Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly lethal malignant intracranial tumor, distinguished from low-grade glioma by histopathological hallmarks such as pseudopalisading cells around necrosis (PAN) and microvascular pro...

    Authors: Jiukun Hu, Xiaohan Sa, Yue Yang, Yuwen Han, Jie Wu, Minxuan Sun, Shaheryar Shafi, Nafees Ahmad, Sami Siraj, Jiao Yang and Yuanshuai Zhou
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:444
  4. Metastasis to lymph nodes is strongly associated with reduced survival in breast cancer patients. To increase the understanding on how lymph node metastasis impairs the local immune response in affected lymph ...

    Authors: Oscar Briem, Balázs Tahin, Asger Meldgaard Frank, Lina Olsson, Anna Sandström Gerdtsson, Eva Källberg and Karin Leandersson
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:422
  5. The identification of the complex spatial architecture of immune cell infiltration and its interaction mechanisms within tumor ecosystems provides crucial insights into therapeutic responses to neoadjuvant the...

    Authors: Wasilijiang Wahafu, Quan Zhou, Xihua Yang, Yongming Yang, Yuanyuan Zhao, Zhu Wang, Xiangpeng Kang, Xiongjun Ye and Nianzeng Xing
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:375
  6. Gastric cancer is a highly aggressive malignancy characterized by a complex tumor microenvironment (TME). Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which are a key component of the TME, exhibit significant heterog...

    Authors: Xijie Zhang, Bo Ren, Bo Liu, Rui Wang, Sen Li, Yuzhou Zhao and Wence Zhou
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:344
  7. The presence of tumour-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) is a well-established prognostic biomarker across multiple cancer types, with higher TIL counts being associated with lower recurrence rates and improved ...

    Authors: Joshua Millward, Zhen He, Aiden Nibali, Dmitri Mouradov, Lisa A Mielke, Kelly Tran, Angela Chou, Nicholas J Hawkins, Robyn L Ward, Anthony J Gill, Oliver M Sieber and David S Williams
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:298
  8. Homologous recombination deficiency (HRD) refers to the dysfunction of homologous recombination repair (HRR) at the cellular level. The assessment of HRD status has the important significance for the formulati...

    Authors: Ke Zhang, Youhui Qiu, Songwei Feng, Han Yin, Qi Liu, Yuxin Zhu, Haoyu Cui, Xiaoying Wei, Guoqing Wang, Xiangxue Wang and Yang Shen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:267
  9. Intravenous leiomyomatosis (IVL) is a histologically well differentiated smooth muscle tumor with aggressive behavior, capable of extending throughout the venous system. Understanding how IVL occurs and develo...

    Authors: Sheng Yin, Peipei Shi, Jing Han, Hua Li, Aimin Ren, Li Ma, Wenbin Tang, Wenxue Liu, Sihui Yu, Tingting Li, Chunsheng Wang, Yingyong Hou and Jiarong Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:229
  10. Gastrointestinal metastases are rare in patients with thyroid carcinoma (TC), and their underlying mechanisms remain unclear. Thus, in this study, we aimed to explore the spatial distribution characteristics o...

    Authors: Di Wang, Ruichun Lu, Fenglian Yan, Yansong Lin, Hao Wang and Huabao Xiong
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:213
  11. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) treatment remains challenging, particularly for immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) non-response patients. Spatial transcriptome (ST) data and machine learning algorithms offer n...

    Authors: Xingte Chen, Shiji Wu, Hongxin He, Jingjing Tang, Yaqi Zhong, Huipeng Fang, Qizhen Huang, Liang Hong, Lingdong Shao and Junxin Wu
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:202
  12. Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are key components of the hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tumor microenvironment (TME). regulating tumor proliferation, metastasis, therapy resistance, immune evasion via di...

    Authors: Yue Liu, Guoping Dong, Jie Yu and Ping Liang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:198
  13. Mucosal head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is often diagnosed at an advanced stage, where the prognosis is poor due to the high rates of recurrence and metastasis. With approximately one million new...

    Authors: Vahid Yaghoubi Naei, Rafael Tubelleza, James Monkman, Habib Sadeghirad, Meg L. Donovan, Tony Blick, Agata Wicher, Sara Bodbin, Amelie Viratham, Robert Stad, Subham Basu, Caroline Cooper, Catherine Barnett, Ken O’Byrne, Rahul Ladwa, Majid Ebrahimi Warkiani…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:177
  14. Colorectal cancer (CRC) presents significant treatment challenges due to its high heterogeneity and complex intercellular interactions. Further exploration of CRC subtypes and interactions among tumor-specific...

    Authors: Youpeng Wang, Xingfeng Qiu, Qinghai Li, Jiale Qin, Lvlan Ye, Xiang Zhang, Xingxiang Huang, Xiangqiong Wen, Ziyang Wang, Weiling He, Yuqin Di and Qi Zhou
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:175
  15. The ability to predict the prognosis of patients with ovarian cancer can greatly improve disease management. However, the knowledge on the mechanism of the prediction is limited. We sought to deconvolute the a...

    Authors: Chun Wai Ng, Kwong-Kwok Wong, Barrett C. Lawson, Sammy Ferri-Borgogno and Samuel C. Mok
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:113
  16. GPC3 has been recognized as a promising target for immunotherapy in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the GPC3-targeted immunotherapies have shown limited therapeutic efficacy. The use of anti-PD-1/PD-L...

    Authors: Mingzhen Zhou, Ziyan Zhou, Lina Hu, Sidong Chen, Fanyan Meng, Jun Chen and Jie Shen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:88
  17. Ferroptosis and immune responses are critical pathological events in spinal cord injury (SCI), whereas relative molecular and cellular mechanisms remain unclear.

    Authors: Siqiao Wang, Li Yang, Zhourui Wu, Chen Li, Shaoke Wang, Zhihui Xiao, Bei Ma, Rongrong Zhu and Liming Cheng
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:43
  18. First-line treatment for advanced gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC) with human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) is trastuzumab combined with chemotherapy. In clinical practice, HER2 positivity is identifie...

    Authors: Zhida Wu, Tao Wang, Junlin Lan, Jianchao Wang, Gang Chen, Tong Tong and Hejun Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2025 23:13
  19. As a prevalent and deadly malignant tumor, the treatment outcomes for late-stage patients with cervical squamous cell carcinoma (CSCC) are often suboptimal. Previous studies have shown that tumor progression i...

    Authors: Limin Zhou, Jiejie Liu, Peipei Yao, Xing Liu, Fei Chen, Yu Chen, Li Zhou, Chao Shen, You Zhou, Xin Du and Junbo Hu
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:1163
  20. Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) are a cornerstone therapy for advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC). However, significant rates of primary resistance hinder their efficacy, and the underlying mechanisms rema...

    Authors: Junfeng Zhang, Qingyan Peng, Jin Fan, Fuzhong Liu, Hongbo Chen, Xing Bi, Shuai Yuan, Wei Jiang, Ting Pan, Kailing Li, Sihai Tan and Peng Chen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:1157
  21. Spread through air spaces (STAS) is a recognized aggressive pattern in lung cancer, serving as a crucial risk factor for postoperative recurrence. However, its phenotype and related spatial structure have rema...

    Authors: Guangyu Fan, Tongji Xie, Mengwei Yang, Lin Li, Le Tang, Xiaohong Han and Yuankai Shi
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:917
  22. The tumor microenvironment (TME) exerts profound effects on tumor progression and therapeutic efficacy. In hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the TME is enriched with cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which s...

    Authors: Wen Tong, Tianze Wang, Yi Bai, Xingpeng Yang, Pinsheng Han, Liuyang Zhu, Yamin Zhang and Zhongyang Shen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:840
  23. Postoperative liver metastasis significantly impacts the prognosis of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumor (panNET) patients after R0 resection. Combining computational pathology and deep learning radiomics can enh...

    Authors: Mengke Ma, Wenchao Gu, Yun Liang, Xueping Han, Meng Zhang, Midie Xu, Heli Gao, Wei Tang and Dan Huang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:768
  24. Oral cancer poses a significant health challenge due to limited treatment protocols and therapeutic targets. We aimed to investigate the invasive margins of gingivo-buccal oral squamous cell carcinoma (GB-OSCC...

    Authors: Soni Shaikh, Harsh Dhar, Manju Moorthy, Vijayalakshmi Bhat, Sangramjit Basu, Devmalya Banerjee, Deepak Kumar Mishra, Sourav Datta and Geetashree Mukherjee
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:759
  25. Sjögren’s Syndrome (SS) is a rare chronic autoimmune disorder primarily affecting adult females, characterized by chronic inflammation and salivary and lacrimal gland dysfunction. It is often associated with s...

    Authors: Ruifan Wu, Zhipei Chen, Jiali Yu, Peng Lai, Xuanyi Chen, Anjia Han, Meng Xu, Zhaona Fan, Bin Cheng, Ying Jiang and Juan Xia
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:748
  26. The intricacies of nucleotide metabolism within tumor cells specific to colorectal cancer (CRC) remain insufficiently characterized. A nuanced examination of particular tumor clusters and their dynamic interpl...

    Authors: Junzhi Liu, Huimin Li, Lantian Wang, Shurui Wang and Qiang Tang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:702
  27. Recurrent/metastatic head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (R/M HNSCC) generally has a poor prognosis for patients with limited treatment options. While incorporating immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) has no...

    Authors: Habib Sadeghirad, James Monkman, Chin Wee Tan, Ning Liu, Joseph Yunis, Meg L. Donovan, Afshin Moradi, Niyati Jhaveri, Chris Perry, Mark N. Adams, Ken O’Byrne, Majid E. Warkiani, Rahul Ladwa, Brett G.M. Hughes and Arutha Kulasinghe
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:677
  28. The spatial context of tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) is important in predicting colorectal cancer (CRC) patients’ clinical outcomes. However, the prognostic value of the TIIC spatial distribution is ...

    Authors: Rongfang Shen, Ying Huang, Deyang Kong, Wenhui Ma, Jie Liu, Haizeng Zhang, Shujun Cheng and Lin Feng
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:606
  29. Metastasis renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients have extremely high mortality rate. A predictive model for RCC micrometastasis based on pathomics could be beneficial for clinicians to make treatment decisions.

    Authors: Feng Gao, Liren Jiang, Tuanjie Guo, Jun Lin, Weiqing Xu, Lin Yuan, Yaqin Han, Jiji Yang, Qi Pan, Enhui Chen, Ning Zhang, Siteng Chen and Xiang Wang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:568
  30. In recent years, single-cell analyses have revealed the heterogeneity of the tumour microenvironment (TME) at the genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels, further improving our understanding of the mecha...

    Authors: Jie Zhu, Ke Zhang, Yuan Chen, Xinyu Ge, Junqing Wu, Peng Xu and Jie Yao
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:563
  31. Cellular communication (CC) influences tumor development by mediating intercellular junctions between cells. However, the role and underlying mechanisms of CC in malignant transformation remain unknown. Here, ...

    Authors: Jie-pin Li, Yuan-jie Liu, Yang Li, Yi Yin, Qian-wen Ye, Zhi-hua Lu, Yu-wei Dong, Jin-yong Zhou, Xi Zou and Yu-gen Chen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:549
  32. Inflammation and dysregulated immunity play vital roles in idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH), while the mechanisms that initiate and promote these processes are unclear.

    Authors: Xincheng Li, Shuangshuang Ma, Qi Wang, Yishan Li, Xiaofan Ji, Jixiang Liu, Jing Ma, Yongbing Wang, Zhu Zhang, Hong Zhang, Hong Chen, Linfeng Xi, Yunxia Zhang, Wanmu Xie, Lu Sun, Zhihui Fu…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:502
  33. The immune microenvironment impacts tumor growth, invasion, metastasis, and patient survival and may provide opportunities for therapeutic intervention in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Although neve...

    Authors: Lyanne Delgado-Coka, Michael Horowitz, Mariana Torrente-Goncalves, Lucia Roa-Peña, Cindy V. Leiton, Mahmudul Hasan, Sruthi Babu, Danielle Fassler, Jaymie Oentoro, Ji-Dong K Bai, Emanuel F. Petricoin III, Lynn M. Matrisian, Edik Matthew Blais, Natalia Marchenko, Felicia D. Allard, Wei Jiang…
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:443
  34. Advanced unresectable gastric cancer (GC) patients were previously treated with chemotherapy alone as the first-line therapy. However, with the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2022 approval of programmed ...

    Authors: Yifan Liu, Wei Chen, Ruiwen Ruan, Zhimei Zhang, Zhixiong Wang, Tianpei Guan, Qi Lin, Wei Tang, Jun Deng, Zhao Wang and Guanghua Li
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:438
  35. Proliferative nodular formation represents a characteristic pathological feature of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and serves as the primary cause for prostate volume enlargement and consequent lower urina...

    Authors: Xiawei Fei, Jican Liu, Junyan Xu, Hongyan Jing, Zhonglin Cai, Jiasheng Yan, Zhenqi Wu, Huifeng Li, Zhong Wang and Yanting Shen
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:380
  36. The spatial localisation of immune cells within tumours are key to understand the intercellular communications that can dictate clinical outcomes. Here, we demonstrate an analysis pipeline for highly multiplex...

    Authors: James Monkman, Afshin Moradi, Joseph Yunis, Geoff Ivison, Aaron Mayer, Rahul Ladwa, Ken O’Byrne and Arutha Kulasinghe
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:239
  37. Clear cell renal cell carcinoma is a prototypical tumor characterized by metabolic reprogramming, which extends beyond tumor cells to encompass diverse cell types within the tumor microenvironment. Nonetheless...

    Authors: Guanwen Yang, Jiangting Cheng, Jiayi Xu, Chenyang Shen, Xuwei Lu, Chang He, Jiaqi Huang, Minke He, Jie Cheng and Hang Wang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:210
  38. Immunotherapy has significantly improved survival of esophageal squamous cell cancer (ESCC) patients, however the clinical benefit was limited to only a small portion of patients. This study aimed to perform a...

    Authors: Butuo Li, Wenru Qin, Linlin Yang, Haoqian Li, Chao Jiang, Yueyuan Yao, Shuping Cheng, Bing Zou, Bingjie Fan, Taotao Dong and Linlin Wang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:195
  39. Combined small-cell lung carcinoma (cSCLC) represents a rare subtype of SCLC, the mechanisms governing the evolution of cancer genomes and their impact on the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) within distin...

    Authors: Wenjuan Ma, Ting Zhou, Mengmeng Song, Jiaqing Liu, Gang Chen, Jianhua Zhan, Liyan Ji, Fan Luo, Xuan Gao, Pansong Li, Xuefeng Xia, Yan Huang and Li Zhang
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:189
  40. The capability to gather heterogeneous data, alongside the increasing power of artificial intelligence to examine it, leading a revolution in harnessing multimodal data in the life sciences. However, most appr...

    Authors: Xiaobing Feng, Wen Shu, Mingya Li, Junyu Li, Junyao Xu and Min He
    Citation: Journal of Translational Medicine 2024 22:131