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REVIEW article

Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1524038

The success of the tumor immunotherapy: neutrophils from bench to beside

Provisionally accepted
Pingwei Xu Pingwei Xu 1,2*Meng Zhu Meng Zhu 1,2Ru Jia Ru Jia 1,2Xiaojie Zhang Xiaojie Zhang 3
  • 1 First Clinical Medical College, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China
  • 2 Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China
  • 3 Department of Obstetrics, First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The present immune therapy was focused on the immune checkpoint blockade or Chimeric Antigen Receptor T-Cell Immunotherapy (CART) transfer, but how to activate the innate immune system to antitumor still lags out. Neutrophils are the most abundant circulating leukocytes in human, and heterogeneous neutrophils have been increasingly recognized as important players in tumor progression. They play double "edge-sward" by either supporting or suppressing the tumor growth, including driving angiogenesis, extracellular matrix remodeling to promote tumor growth, participating in antitumor adaptive immunity, or killing tumor cells directly to inhibit the tumor growth. The complex role of neutrophils in various tumors depends on the tumor microenvironment (TME) they are located, and emerging evidence has suggested that neutrophils may determine the success of tumor immunotherapy in the context of the immune checkpoint blockade, innate immune training, or drug-loaded extracellular microvesicles therapy, which makes them become an exciting target for tumor immunotherapy, but still with challenges. Here, we summarize the latest insights on how to activate neutrophils in antitumor immunity and discuss the advances of neutrophil-targeted immunotherapy strategies.

    Keywords: Neutrophils, Tumor immunotherapy, tumor cell-derived microparticles, Immune checkpoint, Innate immunity

    Received: 08 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Xu, Zhu, Jia and Zhang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Pingwei Xu, First Clinical Medical College, Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.