What can we do in the journey of fighting cancer?

With this upcoming Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO) conference, Chinese Clinical Oncology (CCO) has ushered us into its two-year old birthday since it was launched in CSCO 2012. At this very moment, we are glad to present to our readers a new special issue on Systemic Treatment of Cutaneous and Mucosal Melanoma (STM), which will be highlighted in the CSCO 2014.

From the very beginning, CCO is endowed with a mission of disseminating the up-to-date knowledge and free discussion in all areas related to oncology. To reach this goal, CCO is dedicated to providing cutting-edge findings in the rapidly changing field of oncology, and practical information on diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of cancer. Intensive effort is also reaped in translating the latest research developments into best multimodality practice.

Tough born with the academic support of CSCO in China, CCO aims high for a global view by engaging the international collaboration in the great endeavor of anti-cancer fighting. We are never alone and no single entity could gain any victory in the war again cancer. We appreciate the vision of the cancer pattern in any country with their characteristic like what we always say Chinese characteristic as only through this comprehensive landscape of potential cancer mechanism in different continents can we make better clinical solution for standard care towards this “horrible devil”.

By saying this, I can understand and foresee the future responsibility of being the editor-in-chief of CCO and I am delighted to see its steady growth.

We are very grateful for the tremendously support and help from our editorial board members, who play an important role in this academic arena, needless to say their unfailing commitment to clinical practice combined with the academic research. The diverse experience of the board members allows our editorial panel to lend their expertise to a broad spectrum of cancer subjects. Therefore, we could together bring to our readers the interesting and informative content whether it is key opinion or review effort from these leading experts.

Since 2014, we have added a new column named “Statistics in Oncology Clinical Trials” chaired by Prof. Daniel Sargent and Prof. Qian Shi (both our editorial board members). The goal of the special section on Statistics in Oncology Clinical Trials is to provide a state-of-the-art review or perspectives of statistical issues in oncology clinical trials, and is expected to convey statistical knowledge which is essential to trial design, conduct, and monitoring to a wide range of researchers in oncology area.

As Prof. Sargent and Prof. Shi put it, through illustrations of the basic concepts, discussions of current debates and concerns in the literature, and highlights of evolutionary new developments, we are hoping to engage and strengthen the collaborations between statisticians and oncologists for conducting innovative clinical trials.

While the exploration on the statistics should be a spotlight in guiding our clinicians when performing clinical trials, we also pay endless effort in building strong collaboration in multiple disciplines.

In mid-2013, Prof. Daniel G. Haller together with a group of world famous experts provided their angles in colorectal cancer from treatment to prevention. Later on, Prof. Ghassan K. Abou-Alfa collaborating with an excellent expert team on liver cancer explored the topic of “Hepatocellular Carcinoma” and has generated great effort for an expected in-depth issue.

Here our heartfelt thanks shall go to our honorable guest editors, authors and reviewers, under whose efforts CCO has successfully brought out these interesting and informative issues.

In the upcoming September, we are going to publish the special issue “Systemic Treatment of Cutaneous and Mucosal Melanoma”, as introduced before. The upcoming issues are as follows (Table 1).

Table 1 Upcoming special issues of Chinese Clinical Oncology (CCO)
Full table

To ensure the great articles published in CCO could be distributed to all the major centers around the world, all CCO publications are open access and thus freely available to clinicians and scientist. Moreover, the outstanding articles in CCO will also be translated into Chinese and promoted in DXY.com, the largest bioscience website in China, and will be highlighted in related international conferences, such as CSCO, ASCO, AACR and ESMO etc.

In making the CCO into a more effective international platform for academic communication and education in the field of oncology, we warmly welcome more active participation from the international peers who are interested in oncological research or CCO, to help CCO take great strides in the quality and quantity of its contents.

With the spirit of innovation and perseverance, we should continue our journey of making academic easy, excellent and enthusiastic.

Shukui Qin, MD

Editor-in-Chief, Chinese Clinical Oncology. Director of Cancer Center of Chinese PLA. Executive Member of the Asian Clinical Oncology Society (ACOS). Chair of Chinese Society of Clinical Oncology (CSCO), Chinese Clinical Oncology. People’s Liberation Army Cancer Centre, Bayi Hospital, Nanjing 210002, China.
(Email: editor@thecco.net.)

doi: 10.3978/j.issn.2304-3865.2014.09.01

Disclosure: The author declares no conflict of interest.