Personalizing Cancer Immunity: Host Factors, Immunonutrition, and Artificial Intelligence

Immune checkpoint inhibitors, adoptive cell therapies, and cancer vaccines have reshaped oncology, yet response remains highly heterogeneous and difficult to predict. Most predictive efforts to date have concentrated on tumor-intrinsic features — PD-L1 expression, tumor mutational burden, neoantigen load, and molecular subtype — providing valuable but incomplete insight into who will benefit from immunotherapy and who will not. A growing body of evidence indicates that the host is not a passive background to the tumor, but an active determinant of immune competence, toxicity, and long-term outcome.This Research Topic aims to offer a complementary perspective, moving beyond a purely tumor- or biomarker-centered view toward a more integrated understanding of cancer immunity as a dynamic interaction between tumor and host. We seek to bring into focus the still underexplored role of host-related determinants — nutritional and metabolic status, body composition, sarcopenia and cachexia, frailty and performance status, gut and oral microbiota, chronic inflammation, comorbidities, concomitant medications, sex, age, ethnicity, psychosocial stress, and lifestyle — in shaping the magnitude, quality, and durability of the antitumor immune response.We are particularly interested in contributions that examine how immunonutrition and metabolic interventions (e.g., specific amino acids, omega-3 fatty acids, micronutrients, prebiotics and probiotics, targeted dietary patterns, perioperative nutritional support) can modulate immune fitness, mitigate treatment-related toxicity, and improve outcomes across solid and hematologic malignancies. In parallel, we welcome work that leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to integrate heterogeneous host-level data — clinical, nutritional, microbiome, imaging-derived body composition, wearable and patient-reported data — with tumor and immune features, in order to build truly personalized models of immunotherapy response, resistance, and adverse events.Submissions are welcome across the translational continuum, including original research, clinical studies and trials, real-world evidence, mechanistic and preclinical work, methods papers, systematic reviews, and perspectives. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:o Host nutritional and metabolic status as modulators of immunotherapy efficacy and toxicityo Sarcopenia, cachexia, frailty, and body composition in the context of immune-based treatmentso Immunonutrition strategies in the perioperative, on-treatment, and survivorship settingso Gut, oral, and tumor-associated microbiota as host-level determinants of immune responseo Influence of sex, age, ethnicity, comorbidities, and concomitant medications on immunotherapy outcomeso Psychosocial, behavioral, and lifestyle factors (stress, sleep, physical activity) and antitumor immunityo AI- and ML-based integration of host, tumor, and immune data for personalized prediction of response, resistance, and immune-related adverse eventso Digital health, wearables, and patient-reported outcomes as inputs to host-aware predictive modelso Ethical, equity, and implementation considerations in deploying host-centered, AI-supported personalization in routine oncology careBy bringing together host biology, nutrition science, clinical oncology, and computational approaches, this Research Topic seeks to advance a more complete, patient-centered framework for cancer immunity — one in which the host is recognized as a central, modifiable, and predictable component of therapeutic success.Please note that manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases that are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of the scope of this Research Topic. Topic editors: Edda Russo, Manoj Kumar Kashyap, Francesco Giudici, Sabina Tangaro Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/81960/personalizing-cancer-immunity-host-factors-immunonutrition-and-artificial-intelligence