What is tumor microenvironment

Many of us are afraid that we have cancer. Once we get cancer, it's like stepping into death. Tumor microenvironment mainly refers to the host cells, resident or recruited by tumor cells. Most of these cells are cancer-related fibroblasts and immune cells, as well as cell secretions and non cellular components of the extracellular matrix. What is the microenvironment of cancer?

In the tumor microenvironment, there are some fairly just cells - lymphocytes. They are the main force to attack cancer. They are T cells, B cells and natural killer cells (NK cells). We also call these cells tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs)? 》The leading actor. However, scientists found that TILs in the tumor microenvironment showed much lower antitumor activity than other lymphocytes far away from the tumor. What is the reason for this difference? In the later research, people found out the culprit tumor microenvironment (TME). TME not only makes the surrounding cells produce immune suppression, but also helps tumor cells escape immune attack.

Today's protagonist is finally on the stage - immune tumor microenvironment, which is mainly composed of immunosuppressive molecules, matrix components, inhibitory immune cells and related immunosuppressive cytokines produced by tumor cells.

The immunosuppressive cells are mainly composed of tumor microenvironment inhibitory "four King Kong", which are tumor associated macrophages, regulatory T cells, bone marrow-derived inhibitory cells and tumor associated fibroblasts. The immune cytokines include IL-10, TGF - β, PD-1 / PD-L1 and exosomes.

Cell capture is actually a very long process, we do not count the number of cells in our body, there are many types, and even there may be mutation. However, the current medical level has been constantly developing, and many diseases that were difficult to detect in the past are believed to be broken one by one in the future.