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REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1563858
This article is part of the Research Topic Non-malignant Cells in Cancer Immune Microenvironment View all 6 articles
The solid tumor microenvironment and related targeting strategies: a concise review
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Radiology, Wuhan Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
- 2 Department of Nuclear Medicine, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1095 Jiefang Ave, Wuhan, China
The malignant tumor is a serious disease threatening human life. Increasing studies have confirmed that the tumor microenvironment (TME) is composed of a variety of complex components that precisely regulate the interaction of tumor cells with other components, allowing tumor cells to continue to proliferate, resist apoptosis, evade immune surveillance and clearance, and metastasis. However, the characteristics of each component and their interrelationships remain to be deeply understood. To target TME, it is necessary to deeply understand the role of various components of TME in tumor growth and search for potential therapeutic targets. Herein, we innovatively classify the TME into physical microenvironment (such as oxygen, pH, etc.), mechanical microenvironment (such as extracellular matrix, blood vessels, etc.), metabolic microenvironment (such as glucose, lipids, etc.), inflammatory microenvironment and immune microenvironment. We introduce a concise but comprehensive classification of the TME; depict the characteristics of each component in TME; summarize the existing methods for detecting each component in TME; highlight the current strategies and potential therapeutic targets for TME; discuss current challenges in presenting TME and its clinical applications; and provide our prospect on the future research direction and clinical benefits of TME.
Keywords: Tumor Microenvironment, Classification, Characteristic, Targeting strategies, perspective
Received: 20 Jan 2025; Accepted: 12 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Zhou, Ju, Dong and Zheng. 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:
Chuansheng Zheng, Department of Radiology, Wuhan Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China
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