Breast Surgery, Department of Surgical Oncology, Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, Elm & Carlton Streets, Buffalo, NY, 14263, USA.
Holy Cross Hospital Michael and Dianne Bienes Comprehensive Cancer Center, Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA.
Hum Cell. 2020 Oct;33(4):930-937. doi: 10.1007/s13577-020-00380-4. Epub 2020 Jun 7.
The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in tumor progression, therapeutic response, and patient outcomes. TME includes immune cells, blood and lymphatic vessels, and so on. There are anti-cancer and pro-cancer immune cells. In general, infiltration of anti-cancer immune cells, such as cytotoxic T cells (CTLs), is associated with a favorable patient prognosis. In contrast, infiltration of pro-cancer immune cells, such as regulatory T cells (Tregs), tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) and myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs), is associated with a worse prognosis. However, some immune cells, which play an ambivalent role in cancer immunity, have demonstrated contradictory impacts on patient prognosis. Blood and lymphatic vessels play crucial roles in TME not only as delivery and draining systems of fluid and molecules, but also allowing cancer cells access to systematic circulation to metastasize. Angiogenesis promotes cancer aggressiveness and is associated with a worse prognosis. Its targeted therapy shows a benefit in some cancers, however, because the target can vary by caner type, a benefit of anti-angiogenesis therapy is limited in the current standard of care. Lymphangiogenesis plays a role in lymph node metastasis, thus, it is associated with a poor prognosis in some cancers. To study TME, the mouse model is one of the most commonly used tools. The choice of appropriate mouse model depends on the hypothesis being tested and the scientific question being asked. Here, we review recent studies that investigated the clinical relevance of TME components and introduce mouse models to study TME.
肿瘤微环境 (TME) 在肿瘤进展、治疗反应和患者预后中起着关键作用。TME 包括免疫细胞、血液和淋巴血管等。有抗癌和促癌免疫细胞。一般来说，抗癌免疫细胞如细胞毒性 T 细胞 (CTL) 的浸润与患者预后良好相关。相比之下，促癌免疫细胞如调节性 T 细胞 (Tregs)、肿瘤相关巨噬细胞 (TAMs) 和髓源性抑制细胞 (MDSCs) 的浸润与预后较差相关。然而，一些在癌症免疫中起矛盾作用的免疫细胞对患者预后的影响也存在矛盾。血液和淋巴血管在 TME 中起着至关重要的作用，不仅作为液体和分子的输送和引流系统，还允许癌细胞进入系统性循环转移。血管生成促进癌症侵袭性，与预后不良相关。其靶向治疗在某些癌症中显示出益处，然而，由于靶点因癌症类型而异，抗血管生成治疗的益处在当前的标准治疗中受到限制。淋巴管生成在淋巴结转移中起作用，因此，在某些癌症中与预后不良相关。为了研究 TME，小鼠模型是最常用的工具之一。选择合适的小鼠模型取决于正在测试的假设和提出的科学问题。在这里，我们综述了最近研究 TME 成分的临床相关性，并介绍了用于研究 TME 的小鼠模型。
