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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.
Using two-photon fluorescence imaging, the authors show that superoxide anion in hepatic stellate cells impairs the infiltration of CD8+ T cells in a mouse model of hepatocellular carcinoma.
Immune checkpoint inhibition is a successful form of immune therapy; however response rates vary widely among individual patients. Here authors show that circulating small extracellular vesicles might contribute to poor response to anti-PD-1 treatment by carrying PD-1 and CD80 which results in higher level of vesicular PD-L1 expression in the circulation at the expense of expression on tumour cell membranes, causing immunosuppression.
Although metabolic reprogramming within the tumour microenvironment (TME) has been reported in breast cancer, whether and how this evolves during treatment remains unclear. Here, the authors use multiple ‘omic’ analyses to examine this question in patients with breast cancer undergoing neoadjuvant chemotherapy.
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).
Cancer cells adjust the composition of their glycocalyx to increase its thickness and create a physical barrier that shields them from immune recognition and engagement.