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The cancer microenvironment, or tumour microenvironment, describes the non-cancerous cells present in the tumour. These include fibroblasts, immune cells and cells that comprise the blood vessels. It also includes the proteins produced by all of the cells present in the tumour that support the growth of the cancer cells.
The immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment in Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is a cause of low efficacy of immunotherapies in these tumours. In this study, the authors delineate a FLI1-mediated Kyn metabolic mechanism as an immune evasion mechanism in NPC and they show that pharmacological inhibition of FLI1 improves both spontaneous and checkpoint therapy-induced immune responses.
A preprint by Ben-Chetrit et al. investigates the molecular and cellular mechanisms that regulate macrophage heterogeneity in solid breast cancer tumours.
In this Tools of the Trade article, Zuzana Tatarova describes the development of MIMA, an integrated analytical platform providing the quantitative information on tumour microenvironment drug responses required for effective treatment design.
In this recent study, He et al. establish that chronic stress promotes metastasis through stress-induced formation of neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs).