COVID-19 still on center stage in Oncology debates

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic, which is still far from over, is continuing to take center stage in most debates on current cancer research and care. A year after Covid-19 outbreak and the first lockdown, it is clear that the disease had a heavy toll on cancer patients impacting on every stage from screening to diagnosis and treatment (1-3). With the availability of antiSARS-CoV2 vaccines, recent debates focused also on the vaccination strategies for cancer patients and for those eligible to access oncology clinical trials (4, 5). In our previous issue we discussed how the pandemic affected the number of new cancer diagnoses, showing a reduction compared to the same period in the preceding year (1, 6), and our authors presented some of the challenges faced from oncologists during the first wave of the pandemic (7, 8). In this issue of Annals of Research in Oncology, Lucia Fratino and Diego Serraino focus on some clear cut questions regarding SARS-CoV-2 infection, cancer, cancer therapies and immune suppression which demand attention and, possibly, guidelines, although recommendations for the management of cancer patients in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection have been mostly produced outside the traditional “Evidence Based” benchmark because of the urgency (9). 1 Department of Medical Biotechnologies, University of Siena, Siena, Italy 2 Sbarro Institute for Cancer Research and Molecular Medicine, Center for Biotechnology, College of Science and Technology, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, USA 3 Oncologia Medica, Clinical Cancer Center, AUSL-IRCCS, Reggio Emilia, Italy 4 Cell Biology and Biotherapy Unit, Istituto Nazionale Tumori-IRCCS-Fondazione G. Pascale, Naples, Italy A. Giordano 1,2, C. Pinto 3, F. Pentimalli 4 COVID-19 STILL ON CENTER STAGE IN ONCOLOGY DEBATES