Advancements in technology for characterizing the tumor immune microenvironment

Abstract

Immunotherapy plays a key role in cancer treatment, however, responses are limited to a small number of patients. The biological basis for the success of immunotherapy is the complex interaction between tumor cells and tumor immune microenvironment (TIME). Historically, research on tumor immune constitution was limited to the analysis of one or two markers, more novel technologies are needed to interpret the complex interactions between tumor cells and TIME. In recent years, major advances have already been made in depicting TIME at a considerably elevated degree of throughput, dimensionality and resolution, allowing dozens of markers to be labeled simultaneously, and analyzing the heterogeneity of tumour-immune infiltrates in detail at the single cell level, depicting the spatial landscape of the entire microenvironment, as well as applying artificial intelligence (AI) to interpret a large amount of complex data from TIME. In this review, we summarized emerging technologies that have made contributions to the field of TIME, and provided prospects for future research.

PDL1 targeting by miR-138-5p amplifies anti-tumor immunity and Jurkat cells survival in non-small cell lung cancer

“…Thus, improving understanding of the complexity and mechanism involved in anti-tumor immunity in parallel with molecular changes could be useful in the evolution of cancer biology and tumor immunotherapy. In normal circumstances, the series of co-inhibitory and co-stimulatory receptors are involved in protecting the host against autoimmune and infectious diseases with engagement with their ligand 3 , 4 . Moreover, collecting proof illustrated that tumors have used these pathways as an intelligent and crucial mechanism to escape from the anti-tumor immune system and subsequently progress and metastasis 5 , 6 .…”

Detailed Profiling of the Tumor Microenvironment in Ethnic Breast Cancer, Using Tissue Microarrays and Multiplex Immunofluorescence

“…High-dimensional techniques, such as single-cell RNA sequencing and multiplex immunofluorescence, allow for the comprehensive profiling of the immune landscape at single-cell resolution. These approaches have revealed substantial heterogeneity in immune cell populations and their interactions within the TME, further highlighting the importance of considering ethnic diversity in breast cancer research [ 23 , 24 , 25 , 26 ].…”