Department of Cell Biology and Histology, Faculty of Medicine and Nursing, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Leioa, Spain.
Adv Genet. 2024;112:1-29. doi: 10.1016/bs.adgen.2024.08.001. Epub 2024 Sep 20.
Cancer is a complex disease that includes tumour and healthy cells surrounding and infiltrating the tumour. During cancer development, tumour cells release many extracellular signals in an autocrine and paracrine way, producing deep phenotypic changes in the surrounding cells, becoming protumoral actors. The entire entity composed of tumour cells and the recruited elements is known as the tumour microenvironment. Immune cells, fibroblasts and endothelial cells, mainly with the extracellular matrix, are the most common elements in different cancer types and coexist in a complex balance of protumoral and antitumoral factors. In this context, the spatial disposition of the tumour microenvironment elements is crucial to knowing the role of each one in the disease development, and the multiplex spatial technology is the way to map the tumours. The combination of spatial study with transcriptomic, proteomic, and epigenomic studies is the most modern tool in the hands of cancer researchers, and it has opened a new era in the study of cancer biology.
癌症是一种复杂的疾病，包括肿瘤细胞和周围浸润肿瘤的健康细胞。在癌症发展过程中，肿瘤细胞以自分泌和旁分泌的方式释放许多细胞外信号，导致周围细胞发生深刻的表型变化，成为促肿瘤的因素。由肿瘤细胞和募集的成分组成的整个实体被称为肿瘤微环境。免疫细胞、成纤维细胞和内皮细胞主要与细胞外基质一起，是不同癌症类型中最常见的成分，它们在促肿瘤和抗肿瘤因素的复杂平衡中共存。在这种情况下，肿瘤微环境成分的空间排列对于了解它们在疾病发展中的作用至关重要，而多重空间技术是绘制肿瘤图谱的方法。将空间研究与转录组学、蛋白质组学和表观基因组学研究相结合，是癌症研究人员手中最现代的工具，它为癌症生物学的研究开辟了一个新时代。
