Molecular Stress Responses and Adaptive Reprogramming in Disease Progression and Therapy

Living systems continuously face diverse intrinsic and extrinsic stresses, such as oxidative imbalance, metabolic pressure, endoplasmic reticulum stress, inflammation, toxic exposures, and therapeutic interventions. To maintain homeostasis and survival, cells engage complex adaptive programs that integrate transcriptional, epigenetic, metabolic, and signaling reprogramming. These molecular stress responses are crucial for normal adaptation but, when dysregulated, they drive disease onset, progression, and therapy resistance. Recent insights from genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, single-cell sequencing, and spatial omics have revealed that stress-induced adaptive remodeling is a universal molecular strategy across tissues and disease types. Despite these advances, the mechanistic links between stress signaling, cellular plasticity, tissue remodeling, and treatment outcomes remain incompletely understood.This Research Topic aims to illuminate the molecular logic underlying stress adaptation and its dual role in disease progression and therapeutic responses. We seek contributions that explore how cells and tissues sense, integrate, and respond to stress stimuli; how these molecular programs influence survival, death, or transformation; and how targeting stress-adaptive pathways may improve clinical outcomes. By combining systems biology, molecular diagnostics, and therapeutic research, this Topic will foster a deeper understanding of how adaptive plasticity shapes pathophysiology and drug resistance. We particularly encourage studies identifying stress-associated biomarkers, molecular vulnerabilities, and novel intervention strategies.To gather further insights into disease-related adaptive programs, we welcome articles addressing—but not limited to—the following themes:o Oxidative, metabolic, and endoplasmic reticulum stress responses in pathologyo Mitochondrial dysfunction, bioenergetic reprogramming, and redox controlo Autophagy, ferroptosis, pyroptosis, cuproptosis, and other stress-related cell death pathwayso Cellular senescence and chronic stress–associated phenotypeso Epigenetic and transcriptional remodeling under stress conditionso Stress-mediated immune and inflammatory regulationo Adaptive signaling driving therapeutic tolerance and resistanceo Tumor and tissue microenvironmental remodeling under stresso Stress adaptation in metabolic, cardiovascular, neurological, and infectious diseaseso Biomarker and target discovery through integrative multi-omics, single-cell, spatial, or computational approachesWe welcome Original Research, Review, Mini Review, Methods, FAIR² Data, and Perspective articles integrating experimental and computational approaches. Topic editors: Shengke Zhang, Yun-shi Cai, Guojun Liu, YOU CAI Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/84735/molecular-stress-responses-and-adaptive-reprogramming-in-disease-progression-and-therapy