Department of Translational Molecular Pathology, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, 2130 West Holcombe Boulevard, Houston, TX, 77030, USA.
Adv Biol (Weinh). 2022 Sep;6(9):e2200046. doi: 10.1002/adbi.202200046. Epub 2022 Jun 25.
The importance of neurons and nerve fibers in the tumor microenvironment (TME) of solid tumors is now acknowledged after being unexplored for a long time; this is possible due to the development of new technologies that allow in situ characterization of the TME. Recent studies have shown that the density and types of nerves that innervate tumors can predict a patient's clinical outcome and drive several processes of tumor biology. Nowadays, several efforts in cancer research and neuroscience are taking place to elucidate the mechanisms that drive tumor-associated innervation and nerve-tumor and nerve-immune interaction. Assessment of neurons and nerves within the context of the TME can be performed in situ, in tumor tissue, using several pathology-based strategies that utilize histochemical and immunohistochemistry principles, hi-plex technologies, and computational pathology approaches to identify measurable histopathological characteristics of nerves. These features include the number and type of tumor associated nerves, topographical location and microenvironment of neural invasion of malignant cells, and investigation of neuro-related biomarker expression in nerves, tumor cells, and cells of the TME. A deeper understanding of these complex interactions and the impact of nerves in tumor biology will guide the design of better strategies for targeted therapy in clinical trials.
长期以来,神经细胞和神经纤维在实体瘤肿瘤微环境(TME)中的重要性一直未被探索,而现在由于新技术的发展,这种情况已经得到了改变,这些新技术可以实现 TME 的原位特征描述。最近的研究表明,支配肿瘤的神经的密度和类型可以预测患者的临床预后,并驱动肿瘤生物学的几个过程。如今,癌症研究和神经科学领域正在做出多项努力,以阐明驱动肿瘤相关神经支配以及神经-肿瘤和神经-免疫相互作用的机制。可以使用几种基于病理学的策略,在肿瘤组织中对 TME 中的神经元和神经进行原位评估,这些策略利用组织化学和免疫组织化学原理、hi-plex 技术以及计算病理学方法来识别神经的可测量组织病理学特征。这些特征包括肿瘤相关神经的数量和类型、恶性细胞神经侵袭的拓扑位置和微环境,以及对神经、肿瘤细胞和 TME 细胞中神经相关生物标志物表达的研究。深入了解这些复杂的相互作用以及神经在肿瘤生物学中的作用将指导临床试验中靶向治疗更好策略的设计。
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