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MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1560393
This article is part of the Research Topic Community Series in Immunological Precision Therapeutics: Integrating Multi-Omics Technologies and Comprehensive Approaches for Personalized Immune Intervention: Volume II View all articles
Mechanisms of tumor-associated macrophages in breast cancer and treatment strategy
Provisionally accepted- Department of Ultrasound, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, No.36 Sanhao Street, Heping District, Shenyang, Liaoning 110004, China, Shenyang, China
Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer in women and a leading cause of cancer-related mortality. Despite advances in screening and treatment, outcomes for advanced or recurrent BC remain poor, highlighting the need for new strategies. Recent research emphasizes the tumor microenvironment (TME), particularly tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), as key drivers of tumor growth, metastasis, and resistance to therapy. The presence of M2-like TAMs in the TME promotes immune evasion and tumor progression across BC subtypes. This review summarizes TAMs classification, their role in BC, and emerging therapies targeting TAMs, including depletion, inhibition of recruitment, and reprogramming from pro-tumoral M2 to anti-tumoral M1 phenotypes. Targeting TAMs offers a promising strategy to improve BC treatment outcomes.
Keywords: breast cancer, Macrophages, TAMs, Tumor Microenvironment, HER2, Treatment
Received: 14 Jan 2025; Accepted: 13 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Jin, Meng and Jianwei. 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:
Xinyue Meng, Department of Ultrasound, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, No.36 Sanhao Street, Heping District, Shenyang, Liaoning 110004, China, Shenyang, China
Feng Jianwei, Department of Ultrasound, Shengjing Hospital of China Medical University, No.36 Sanhao Street, Heping District, Shenyang, Liaoning 110004, China, Shenyang, China
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