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REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1572764
This article is part of the Research Topic Tumor-Associated Macrophages and Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes in the Tumor Microenvironment View all articles
The impact of the tumor microenvironment on macrophages
Provisionally accepted
Xiaoduan Li *
Man Xiao - Wuhan Union Hospital, Wuhan, China
The tumor microenvironment (TME), which has crucial roles in tumor progression, metastasis, and drug resistance, contains abundant immune cells. The most influential of these include tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs), which both secrete microenvironment-modifying cytokines and are acted upon by various other components of the microenvironment. The heterogeneity and diversity of TAMs are closely associated with patients' response to tumor immunotherapy; thus, therapeutic targeting of TAMs has become a research focus in recent years. Although numerous studies have explored how TAMs alter the microenvironment, relatively few have investigated the impact of the microenvironment on TAMs. In this review, we discuss the effects of various components of the tumor microenvironment on TAMs from the perspectives of recruitment, reprogramming, and functional modulation, with a focus on the cellular components of the microenvironment. We also summarize the development of immunotherapies targeting TAMs, which have shown promising results in clinical trials.
Keywords: Tumor Microenvironment, Macrophages, recruitment, reprogramming, Functional modulation
Received: 07 Feb 2025; Accepted: 01 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Li and Xiao. 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:
Xiaoduan Li, Wuhan Union Hospital, Wuhan, China
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