Point-of-Care (POC) or Point-of-Care Testing (POCT) have been generally intended for rapid diagnostic testing (less than 90 minutes) to detect and diagnose infectious diseases quickly, close to the patient-healthcare interface. The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the potential uses of POCT devices on a large scale to detect infectious diseases and for public health risk management as well as protecting fragile cancer patients. The study and the implementation of POC for HPV-based screening is stretching out to its current maximum potential the concept of rapid diagnosis of chronic infectious disease, with risk of cancer progression, to include clinical validation and treatment, to provide each woman, also in LMICs, with the possibility of effective secondary prevention of cervical cancer. In the last 5 years, the Infectious Agents and Cancer journal hosted some paradigmatic pieces of the scientific debate on HPV screening in sub-Saharan Africa (Mungo 2024, Dreyer 2024; Parhm 2023; Moyo 2023; Desai 2020; Onyango 2020). This collection is willing to highlight the richness of the debate, presenting the results and focusing on the open questions. These start from how to reach the women who mostly can benefit from screening, increasing their awareness, health literacy and, finally, participation in screening, including the opportunity of introducing self-sampling and how to propose it. The main barrier to a massive screening in LMIC is still the cost of the intervention, researchers are working to develop and validate HPV assays that are sustainable and feasible as POCT, possibly clinically validated also on self-sample. The one-step screening needs to rapidly identify women that can deserve treatment possibly avoiding histological assessment. Studies are investigating the best triage strategies to stratify women according to their risk of CIN3+. Accurate triage and risk stratification also open the question of how to manage woman who are HPV-positive and triage-negative; these women finitely do not deserve treatment but have a high risk of CIN3+ in the future. Defining appropriate, feasible, and acceptable follow up strategies for these women is a new research need. The collection of the included studies goes from the laboratory to the community, from the validation of new molecular methods to capacity building of professionals and community involvement.

Infectious agents cause approximately 20% of all human cancer cases worldwide, with higher rates in low-income countries. Six human viruses, including high-risk alpha human papillomaviruses (HPV), hepatitis B (HBV) and C (HCV) viruses, human T-cell lymphotropic virus 1 (HTLV-1), Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), and Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (HHV-8), have been classified as class 1 carcinogens by the International Agency for Research on Cancer. In addition, the Helicobacter pylori bacterium as well as the Opisthorchis viverrini, Clonorchis sinensis, and Schistosoma haematobium helminths have been also defined as class 1 carcinogens to humans. All known oncogenic pathogens can promote cell survival and transformation because of their common abilities to cause chronic insults, genetic and epigenetic alterations, deregulated metabolic pathways, and immune escape.

The global burden of pathogen-related cancers is expected to grow with the identification of novel oncogenic microorganisms or uncommon tropism of known agents in the body sites. Paradigmatic is the role of HPV infection in oropharyngeal cancers and the clinical relevance of such association. The cooperation of viruses with environmental risk factors, such as cutaneous HPV types and ultraviolet radiation or HBV and aflatoxin, is another important emerging issue in cancer development. Furthermore, recent findings showed the intriguing effects of microbiota in cancer susceptibility, neoplastic progression, co-infections with carcinogenic agents, and response to therapy.

This collection aims to gather and share novel information focusing on epidemiology, molecular biology, cellular biology, genetics, and epigenetics as well as translational research of infectious agents causing cancer. All types of manuscripts in this scope will be welcome, including research articles, brief reports, and review articles.

All submissions in this collection undergo the journal’s standard peer review process. Similarly, all manuscripts authored by a Guest Editor(s) are handled by the Editor-in-Chief.