Targeting tumor-infiltrating macrophages to combat cancer

Targeting tumor-associated macrophages to combat pancreatic cancer

The tumor microenvironment is replete with cells that evolve with and provide support to tumor cells during the transition to malignancy. The hijacking of the immune system in the pancreatic tumor microenvironment is suggested to contribute to the failure to date to produce significant improvements in pancreatic cancer survival by various chemotherapeutics. Regulatory T cells, myeloid derived s...

Tumor-Infiltrating Macrophages Induce

Tumor-infiltrating macrophages, cancer stem cells and therapeutic responses

While the genetic and epigenetic changes that regulate cell proliferation, survival and/or differentiation are known 'initiators' of tumor development, these events do not occur in isolation but rather, in the context of a diverse organ specific tumor stroma. Of the stromal components, tumor-infiltrating immune cells are a hallmark of most solid tumors, and the presence of varied immune populat...

Targeting tumor-infiltrating macrophages decreases tumor-initiating cells, relieves immunosuppression, and improves chemotherapeutic responses.

Tumor-infiltrating immune cells can promote chemoresistance and metastatic spread in aggressive tumors. Consequently, the type and quality of immune responses present in the neoplastic stroma are highly predictive of patient outcome in several cancer types. In addition to host immune responses, intrinsic tumor cell activities that mimic stem cell properties have been linked to chemoresistance, ...

Restoring PML tumor suppression to combat cancer

Surmounting multiple tumor suppressive barriers is fundamental to cancer onset, but also predicts that their restoration may pose a powerful anticancer strategy. The proof of this principle has been elegantly demonstrated by the restoration of p53-induced tumor suppression (reviewed in ref. 1). The promyelocytic leukemia protein (PML) is emerging as a key tumor suppressor that is inactivated in...